Blog – Page 11 – Kit Campbell Books

Trucking Along

How’s it going, squiders? Busy busy over in this neck of the woods, but that seems to always be the case.

(We’re going to get new neighbors soon, which is always a bit nerve wracking.)

So far so good on the feedback. I spent yesterday transferring the marathon comments into an editing copy and then editing Chapters 1 and 2 (which I finished this morning), so that’s ready to send to the in-person critique group.

manuscript pages with markup — wheeee colorful

I put chapter 3 up yesterday for the critique marathon and was pretty pleased with how I updated it, but so far people aren’t into it, so that’s a bit of a downer. Oh well. However, the way the marathon is set up, if enough people don’t think it’s ready, I’ll have to redo the chapter and repost it before I can move farther in the story.

So I may have to skip a week, because I’m not sure I can fix it (also depending what people think is wrong) before next Monday. But we shall have to see.

I signed up for some sort of structure challenge at AutoCrit but I haven’t even touched it because of critique central over here. Oh well! I’m sure it would be helpful but you can’t do everything all the time, and I am getting work done toward my main goals, so it is what it is.

Also, when I went to work on Chapter 4 I discovered I’d switched chapters 4 and 5 in my notes. I can see why I did that, and I think it will work nicely, so good job past!Kit on properly documenting things.

Anyway, I hope things are going well for you! I’m feeling pretty great, like I’m actually getting somewhere. Getting up early to work has been a bit rough (not going to bed early enough) but it is paying off in the productivity.

Fingers crossed that chapter 3 passes muster!

Month of Feedback

Hi-ho, squiders! I’d forgotten how much a different summer camp every week messes with my routines. Blah. I’d better sit down and figure out how I’m going to deal with that.

Anybody had any thoughts about the summer series this year? I warn you, if left to my own devices, who knows what we shall come up with. (I’ve made a list! Bwhahahahahaha)

Anyway, last week the summer critique marathon started over on one of my online writing groups. This is a great resource–several members have recently gotten agents–and I wish I was always in a place where I had a story to submit, though it does take a lot of my time to keep up with critiques for other people.

I’m going to run through Book 1, which means I need to stay about a chapter ahead on my revision so I have a chapter ready each week. Should be doable, fingers crossed. Best laid plans of mice and men, and all that jazz.

Last week I put Chapter 1 up and got some interesting feedback. Half the people have seen the story before and half haven’t, so it was interesting to see what new people said vs old people. In general, the feedback has been more positive than I normally get for this particular story, so I’m calling that a win!

If I budget my time right, I’d like to take the feedback from last week and this week and revamp before sending the first two chapters to the new in-person critique group I joined.

This is both an exciting and a terrifying idea. I so rarely have so many opportunities for feedback, and being able to tweak not once but twice this month is an enormous task. But since the beginning is a lot of the problem, it’s definitely something I should try and hit.

Anyway, wish me luck!

So Long, May

Holy crap, squiders. May was one disaster after another. (And it’s lingering–my grandmother is in the hospital and it could be really bad.)

But, on the other hand, I actually sold two short stories. Hooray! Vindication!

Now I only have three stories in rotation, though. Time to write some more, I guess. Will need to ponder when/how the best way to do that is. Look for anthology calls? Troll my inspiration list?

I’m actually thinking about maybe trying my hand at some mystery short stories. Publish under a penname, give myself some credentials for when I get my cozy mystery series ready to go.

Should at least do some fantasy ones. All the ones that are left are horror. Maybe scifi. Maybe do a little of everything.

The first part of my serial that I wrote in April goes live today (not yet, because the news about my grandmother has derailed the last few steps on that, but check Turtleduck Press later this evening or tomorrow morning once I get my act together. It’s called Across Worlds With You.) so that’s also fun.

And we’re in chapter 3 of the Book 1 rewrite. Cpt 3 is going pretty well. I think I’ll give Cpts 1/2 to my critique group this month and maybe also run it through the critique marathon, which starts next week. The critique marathon people have seen the beginning of this story a couple of times so they can at least tell me if it’s getting better or not. Hopefully.

So. June.

Summer is always interesting when the small, mobile ones are out of school. May try to get up early and work before they wake up, because it’s very hard to concentrate around them, even if they’re doing their own thing. Constant interruptions.

But the plan is to continue the rewrite (and deal with feedback as we get it), poke SkillShare (I was planning on reposting the classes in May but, you know, May), and generally see how things are going. Maybe if things are going well I’ll add in some short story poking too. Options, options.

Will also need to ponder our summer series for the year and get that going soon too. If you have thoughts (something specific, or reading vs writing related), let me know! If you’ve been here for a while you know I love to absorb random knowledge and regurgitate it whenever possible, so I’m open to pretty much whatever would be helpful.

Fingers crossed that the life front for June is better! (The writing/publishing front for May was quite nice, no complaints there except I could have used more writing time.) Requests for the Summer Series? Random thoughts?

See you next week!

OH! I forgot. Hidden Worlds is part of the Adventure of a Lifetime bundle at Prolific Works this month! Swing over there to get a copy for free!

I Thought the Showers Were Supposed to Be in April

Howdy, squiders. When it rains, it pours, eh?

Had a remediation company out today finally. The drywall is still wet, and while we don’t have the official estimate yet, the guy thought it would be like $12,000 to fix everything. So that’s fun.

She said sarcastically.

Also I’m sick. I developed a cough last Thursday, which has been getting steadily worse since then, so yesterday I went to the doctor. I guess they have a flu test now? It’s like a COVID test, a swab up your nose.

Anyway I came back positive for the flu.

Not awesome.

I haven’t really slept since Thursday night because I keep coughing myself awake, which is also not awesome. I generally sleep pretty well so this ongoing insomnia is new and disconcerting to me. But apparently there is medication you can take to help with the flu, so I am on it now.

Being sick as an adult, and especially a parent, is the not fun. When the small, mobile ones are sick, they get the special “sick TV” in their room and get to hang out on screens all day. I have to “do my responsibilities” and whatnot.

That being said, I did take today off work today (after going in yesterday, which was probably not the best idea, but I thought I just had a cold that had morphed into bronchitis–a fairly common thing when I was younger–and also knew there was a bunch to be done that only I was going to do) and have had most of the day to myself.

It is weird!

The medication, which, like many medications, has a warning about operating heavy machinery and, unlike many medications, has actually turned my brain into cotton. So far I’ve only texted the wrong person once, but it’s probably just best that I don’t try to do anything that requires any thinking.

When I have a day to myself, my instinct is always to catch up on projects that have fallen a bit behind, but today I’ve actually managed to rest. I read 75% of and finished We Have Always Been Here by Lena Nguyen, which is scifi…well, not horror, but horror-adjacent. I really enjoyed it. Five stars. Riveting. I’d probably say the same thing even if I was thinking clearly.

Anyway, things continue to suck in this corner of the world. I hope yours is better!

Not Dead, Just Drowning

Hey, squiders, just wanted to give you a heads up. I didn’t mean to go all radio silence on you.

Our basement flooded overnight last Thursday night. (Our best guess is that the sump pump, which was already elderly, just gave up. Or that it got behind and, once the water hit other electronics, tripped the outlet and then it gave up.) We had over a third of our yearly rainfall in 48 hours which, as you can imagine, went poorly. Especially because we’re borderline a desert.

Anyway, Thursday night when we went to bed the basement was dry, and Friday morning when I got up early to do a medical test, there was three inches of standing water across the entire basement.

Our basement is partially finished, and while we’ve always had a bit of an issue figuring out what to do with it, we had begun converting the finished part to a kids’ hangout area. So, unfortunately, we had a fair amount of stuff on the floor. We’d recently moved all our movies and video games down but had yet to put them back on the shelves they go on. We had two retro gaming systems out that the small, mobile ones had been using. My mom had just given me several watercolor books that I was looking forward to going through.

Friday was spent desperately trying to dry the basement out. We managed to get the sump pump going again, which dried out the unfinished portion decently fast, but every water remediation company in a 50-mile radius had a 4-day waiting list, and every equipment rental place in a 150-mile radius was also out of water remediation equipment. You couldn’t even buy anything.

Because, it turns out, everyone’s basements flooded.

I mean, no, not everyone. Definitely an exaggeration. But a LOT of people’s. And since we live in a place where it doesn’t really rain (see: desert) we don’t have the infrastructure in place to deal with massive flooding.

After checking four different stores I finally managed to secure a RugDoctor, with the idea that we would suck the water out of the carpet. Friends, we sucked so much water out of the carpet, and yet it did not seem to actually be getting any drier. Late Friday night we came to the very sad realization that the carpet could not be saved. Not only was it not drying out (and we couldn’t get anyone to help us), but it was full of dirty water and was going to be near impossible to ever get clean again.

So Saturday we spent the day tearing out the carpet. Waterlogged carpets and pads are very heavy, so I actually reinjured my back a bit, right after I’d finally gotten it feeling pretty good. That took most of the day, though we had to duck out for a few hours to go to a dance recital for the smaller, mobile one.

When we came back from that, we discovered that the sump pump had well and truly died. We could get it to run for five minutes at a time before it would give up yet again, and we had to let it cool down for 45 minutes before it would start up again. We had a small fountain pump from a landscaping project that we put down in the sump well, but it really only was powerful enough to keep the water from overflowing again.

As you can imagine, you also could not buy a sump pump anywhere in a gazillion-mile radius. We ended up buying one off of Amazon, but it wouldn’t arrive until Sunday night. So Saturday afternoon, night (we woke up a few times overnight to check on the status of the basement), and Sunday day, we had to keep checking and occasionally running the sump pump to keep things contained.

Sunday afternoon we got the new sump pump and replaced it.

And all this time, it has kept raining, on and off.

Work this week has been crazy–I’ve put in six hours of overtime, four today alone–which is not helping.

I still have not gotten a remediation company to come look at the basement (are the walls growing mold? Possibly!) or a plumber to come look at our utility room drain, which is apparently completely clogged and was no help whatsoever. The floors are mostly dry? A week later? But they’re not all dry.

We tried to save the movies/video games by laying them out for a week upstairs/in the garage, but apparently they smell like mildew now so that bodes ill.

Long story short (too late), the basement is a huge problem, and one that continues to have further complications. And that is why I have not been around.

Wish us luck, squiders. We’re going to need it.

Today’s Post is Delayed Due to Tornado Warnings

Oof. The weather today has been something, squiders. We almost never get tornado warnings here–the mountains tend to disrupt the weather systems that make them. In fact, I can’t actually remember having to shelter in place for one ever, though we did do tornado drills as a kid.

(I had to bring the dog into the basement, and she’s never been down there before. She was not a fan.)

Anyway, nothing got done during the tornado warning because the basement isn’t the best place to work, I was anxious about family members and where they were (the small, mobile ones weren’t released from school until an hour after they were supposed to be because of the tornado warning), and because I just couldn’t focus.

Anyway.

So, what’s up?

My 1000 words a day goal on Book 1 is being very spotty. Oh well. On we blindly stumble.

What else is happening?

Let’s see, I told you guys about the big deal review for Hidden Worlds already.

I sold a short story this week, so that’s also exciting for me! It’s a British publication which doesn’t really mean anything except I don’t think I’ve sold to one before.

Due to the larger, mobile one’s battery incident on Friday I’ve learned there’s a national battery ingestion hotline.

Eurovision is happening this week, and I love Eurovision, so I’m super excited. Not sure who I’m hoping to win.

My mother moved closer yesterday, so hopefully I’m going to get to see her more.

Otherwise, May is just being May, and no one is really surprised.

Sorry for the disjointed entry, squiders. I didn’t want you guys to think I’d forgotten you. See you probably Friday, with more coherency. Fingers crossed, anyway.

Still Pondering SkillShare

Happy Friday, squiders. I hope May is going well so far!

I went in to SkillShare this morning to check my stats, and God, is it depressing. You can see exactly where 1) they changed the payments rules and 2) they took down some of my classes because of “lack of engagement” (including one that had 100 people currently enrolled).

Very depressing. I worked hard on those.

(Sorry. I started this post yesterday then got derailed when somebody ate a battery and had to be taken to the ER.)

(He’s fine and has hopefully learned a life lesson.)

(Nothing really prepares you for parenting.)

They continue their antics, though, because I got an email a few weeks ago saying they were going to stop accepting classes in some areas (writing was not one of them) and then actively start removing classes as well. I can understand that they’re trying to rebrand just for creative classes, but it’s kind of a crap move still, especially if people were making decent money from their classes that they’re going to lose.

I still am not sure what to do. I think what I’m going to try in the short term is re-uploading the classes that were taken down, and see if I can better maintain my “engagement” (though, like I said last time we talked about this, you can’t make people post or review, so who knows) and get my income back up near where it was.

And I guess what I should do long term is research other teaching platforms, though I am not looking forward to re-recording sections of classes that call out SkillShare specifically.

(I have thought more about just hosting them on my own site, but it does lose the discoverability aspect that a platform provides, and probably isn’t worth it to me in the long run.)

Any thoughts on online classes, squiders? Do you prefer to take a class on a platform, and if so, which ones are you most fond of?

Onto May

You know what was interesting, squiders–after the note last week about how Nano 2011 went, I went back through the archives to see what I’d actually done, and, well, I hardly talked about it at all.

Seriously, like two sentences in the last blog post of the month to note that I’d had a 100K goal and that I’d not made it.

The rest of the posts were Nano tips and general cheerleading, which reminds me that I used to spend a lot more time on “professional” posts back when I started and very little time on what I was working on or personal posts.

I asked from time to time, if people prefer a certain type of post over another, but I’ve found that people don’t tend to respond, so you get what you get and you don’t throw a fit, as they say in the preschools these days.

AnyWAY.

I did not get to writing last weekend, as expected, but I have made some progress thus far this week. I finished the paper edit on Chapter 2 (I’d gotten less far than I’d remembered) and started the rewrite, which is going quite well and is feeling very good, so huzzah.

Which leads me onto the general goal for the month, which is making decent progress on the rewrite/revision of Book 1. Ideally I’d like to do at least 1000 a day, which is much easier on a rewrite when we’re just changing bits and hopefully not writing a ton of completely new material, but the month is conspiring against me.

It’s what, the third? And I’ve sick children, work drama, parental obligations, and volunteer obligations already, plus a whole bunch of extra errands that keep popping up. So fingers crossed that all that goes off somewhere else.

(Not terribly optimistic–May is traditionally an awful month, working wise, because school gets out and someone has a birthday, and there’s a ton of school and scout stuff as everyone tries to stuff everything in before summer hits.)

Aside from the ongoing revision, I’ll no doubt have some edits on the novella that need to be done before the parts start going live, and I should probably read over it (I ended up sending it in without re-reading it or self-editing, so, uh, whoops? I guess it’s fine though, the reader really liked it) and decide where I’m going to do breaks, and how many sections it’ll end up being. Four or five, probably?

But anyway.

It’s gotten warm in the last week, and today it was already too warm, so summer is definitely on the way. Alas.

See you guys later this week!

April, Week 4

Good uh…afternoon, squiders! Happy second-to-last day of April! (Except not really because it means May is right around the corner, which means birthdays and school ending, and having to figure out summer break, and…)

So, how have things gone since I finished my novella on Tuesday?

Well, they haven’t.

I should know this by now. If I am single-flowing a project (whether purposefully or due to time constraints) I almost always take a few days break at the end. Sometimes longer, depending on the length of the project that’s just been finished.

Hell, for Nano 2011 (probably talked about here on the blog at the time) I had grand plans of doing 100K. I had 50K left on one project (which was probably Book 1, now that I think about it) and then I had a second project lined up and ready to go. The first half of the month went great! I think I hit The End on Day 11 or something.

But then instead of moving into the second project for the rest of the month, I just…gave up.

Not my finest hour.

I’ve found that if I’m actively working on multiple projects (like I was SUPPOSED to be) then this doesn’t happen. It counteracts the “I’m done with a project, now what do I do with myself” feeling that tends to hit (as well as the “I’ve finished something and now may rest on my laurels” feeling) since you can just adjust your focus to the other stuff.

All this to say that I haven’t really done much since finishing my novella.

I did email some friends to see if someone would beta, and yesterday I re-read Chapter 1 (eesh) and went back over my notes. A lot of yesterday was also spent going back over stuff I’ve been putting off–emails that needed responding to, webinars that have been sitting open, smaller tasks that I’ve been putting off. I still have a few of those to do, which I might get to here after this.

But I do have to accept at this point that even if I work on Chapter 2 today (unlikely, it’s hard to get things done on the weekends unless I get up early because everyone has stuff to do–today was children’s dinner theater rehearsal and a fencing tournament, plus there’s yardwork and we’re going to go see a play tonight, and now all of a sudden we have dinner plans with the cousins–and I’m unlikely to get up early because I like my sleep) and tomorrow (also unlikely, see above but with different things) there’s no way I’m getting the 9.7K I need to hit 25K.

And, you know, that’s okay. I did write an entire novella this month! That’s not too shabby. AND I got a 5-star review on Hidden Worlds from Reader’s Favorite, which is a pretty big deal. I’ve got to put that up on its various pages. Something more for the To Do list.

Every little bit helps, after all, and it’s no good beating yourself up over things you didn’t get done. Undue stress and all that jazz.

Anyway, see you in May, squider!

April, Week 3

Hey ho, squiders! Sorry for the radio silence last week. I don’t really have a good excuse except that I was (as always) trying to do too much at the same time.

I know we’re a little late for Week 3, but let’s talk about it anyway.

I finished up the novella that was half of my goals for Camp Nano today. It’s about 15.3K, so a little over, but more or less what I was going for. I’m going to give it a few days to sit, and then I’ll read back over it, make any necessary changes, and send it over to the TDP people.

Wednesday and Thursday last week were a little rough. I always get a little sloggy at the dark moment because sometimes it’s depressing to write about people at their lowest point, so I didn’t make my words for those days. But I persevered, and now the draft is done! And I think it’s pretty good, just from my initial feelings, so I’ll have to see if that holds up when I read back over it.

Now that that madness is done(-ish), it’s back to the revision. I had grand plans that I was going to work on both throughout the month, but I just haven’t had time. Mondays and Fridays I have off, so those are, in theory, the days where I would have time to do multiple projects, but I’ve been so busy on those days it hasn’t happened. Yesterday I didn’t get to write at all.

Dunno if we’re going to make much progress revision-wise–in theory, I’ve got to do 2K a day to make my camp goal, which is pushing it on a good day. I left off in the middle of the paper edit for Chapter 2, so I’ve got to finish that before I can start the writing portion. I might read back over Chapter 1 as well, which will let me check and see if it’s as awful as it felt, and let me remember what I was doing.

In theory, I’m up for the next critique with the new group I joined, so Chapter 1 needs to be ready (and maybe chapter two, got to figure out how long the pieces are supposed to be). But the initial time we agreed upon isn’t going to work, so I need to figure that out too.

Man, it just never stops, does it?

Anyway, I hope your April is going well. It’s been downpouring for the last ten hours or so, which is weird but nice, except I have to keep going out in it.

See you Thursday, fingers crossed!

Books by Kit Campbell