Blog – Page 7 – Kit Campbell Books

WriYe and Author Bios

Here we go again, hopefully not forgetting about it for six months in the middle of the year this time.

January’s blog prompt over at WriYe is: Write your future author bio / FAQ page.

Which is a little funny because I’ve had both for years.

I think the FAQ was one of the first things I ever put up on my wordpress blog. I remember I wrote it in a notebook first before putting it up online, which in retrospect, is a little silly. It’s here, by the way (in case you’re coming from kitcampbellbooks.com and not wordpress itself).

It’s definitely on the sillier side, but hey, so am I.

I feel like, in terms of being an author, the purpose of a FAQ is less informative than it might be for other professions. Your job is to make things up, and your FAQ is kind of an opportunity to do just that. Maybe if one was especially famous or important, it might make sense to do a serious one, but where is the fun in that?

I have three main bios that I use for varying things.

Some places want a short bio. Mine is: Kit Campbell likes landsquid and plesiosaurs. She can be found online at http://kitcampbellbooks.com.

Short. Sweet. Weird.

My “professional” bio, the one that’s on my Amazon author page and my website, is this one:

Kit Campbell has never met a mythology she hasn’t liked. This sometimes leads to issues, such as the occasional Norse God of Thunder showing up in the Garden of Eden. She adores weaving in the possibilities forgotten magic can bring to a story, and enjoys making up new creatures, such as large, venomous monsters that hunt in packs.

Kit’s stories have been published in half-a-dozen anthologies, and her YA novella, Hidden Worlds, was released by Turtleduck Press in 2010.

Her debut novel, Shards, was released December 2013.

Kit lives in Colorado in a house of ever-increasing chaos.

This is not my favorite, and it does probably need to be rewritten. Out of date on things like short stories and whatnot. Something to add on to the to do list, I guess.

My favorite bio, and the one I use when I sell a story or go to a con, is this one:

It is a little known fact that Kit was raised in the wild by a marauding gang of octopuses. It wasn’t until she was 25 that she was discovered by a traveling National Geographic scientist and brought back to civilization. This is sometimes apparent in the way that she attempts to escape through tubes when startled.

Her transition to normalcy has been slow, but scientists predict that she will have mastered basics such as fork use sometime in the next year. More complex skills, such as proper grocery store etiquette, may be forever outside her reach.

And then I stick my website on the end. Cuz let’s be honest, I feel the same way about bios as I do about FAQs. Is there any reason to be serious? Maybe eventually. Maybe one day I will win a Hugo award, and then I can add a line about that somewhere.

But for now? Nah.

Anyway, that’s me, at least for now. Thoughts on author bios, squiders? Do you like someone to list their accomplishments, or do you prefer they have a bit of fun?

2023 Reading Stats

STAT TIME, SQUIDERS

My favorite time of the year. My spouse thinks I’m crazy.

If you recall last year, I missed, uh, 43 or something when I was keeping track of how many books I’d read, resulting in me only reading 49 instead of 50. Quite upsetting, but not enough for me to fix how I count (manually, over at Dreamwidth, which is essentially LiveJournal but not owned by the Russians). I checked before I did my stats this year, and I’d forgotten, oh, 37 or something, and had gone from 46 to 38, so. I can’t be trusted.

(Actually, going back, I can’t find either error. So apparently I copied something weird when I did my final count. Yay.)

Anyway.

Books Read in 2023: 51
Change from 2022: +2

Of those*:
13 were Mystery
11 were Fantasy
7 were Nonfiction
6 were Romance
3 were Science Fiction
3 were General Literature
2 were Horror
1 was a short story collections
1 was a biography
1 was Historical Fiction
1 was Magical Realism
1 was Memoir
1 was Folktales

*Some genre consolidation was done here. YA or MG titles went into the general genre. All subgenres of fantasy or romance, for example, also went into the general genre. And things like Science Fiction or Fantasy Mystery went into SF or Fantasy respectively.

New genre(s)**: biography, folklore, historical fiction, magical realism, romance
Genres I read last year that I did not read this year: heist, middle grade, children’s, self-help, metaphysical, Gothic
**This means I didn’t read them last year, not that I’ve never read them.

Genres that went up: mystery, nonfiction, general literature
Genres that went down: fantasy, science fiction, short story collections, memoir

Mystery and fantasy are consistently my two highest genres. Fantasy makes sense–it’s my favorite, it’s what I write, it’s what I read. Mysteries are, like, brain candy. They’re a nice break and they don’t require too much brain power. Science fiction is normally number 3 but apparently I slacked this year. Whoops.

General literature is, like, any story that doesn’t fit into an obvious genre. And nonfiction includes some weird stuff like aliens and ghosts that are arguably not real but good story research. (And also normal nonfiction.)

16 were my books
35 were library books

This is almost exactly the same breakdown as last year. And the books of “mine” I’m reading tend to be ebooks. I really need to get through some physical books around here. They’re taking over. I also need to stop requesting so many books from the library because then they take preference over other books.

(Says the woman who has a book ready to be picked up at the library.)

39 were physical books
12 were ebooks

This is the same breakdown as the year before as well. I go through phases where I read a bunch of ebooks and then I forget all about them and don’t touch them for months on end.

Average rating: 3.51/5

Top rated:
Legends & Lattes (fantasy – 4.4)
The Easy Life in Kamusari (general literature – 4)
Lavender’s Blue (mystery romance – 4)
Red, White & Royal Blue (romance – 4)
The Valley and the Flood (magical realism – 4)

Not my normal genres this year, for the most part. Average rating is down a bit too.

Honorable mentions of 3.9: Keeper of Enchanted Rooms (historical fantasy), We Have Always Been Here (science fiction)

Most recent publication year: 2023
Oldest publication year: 1983
Average publication year: 2017
Books older than 1900: 0
Books newer than (and including) 2018: 37

Wow. I read a lot of newer books this year. I mean, I read 15 books from 2023 alone.

The first book I read this year was A Merry Murder by Kate Kingsbury (historical mystery) and the last was Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett (fantasy).

And now, on to 2024! I finished my first book yesterday (the Christmas mythology one I told you guys about on Tuesday) and have started the DNA one, as well as an ebook that seems to be a romance set in Germany? I don’t know, sometimes I just pick up random books for whatever reason. Read broadly, as they say.

See you next week!

2024 Has Arrived

Hey ho, squiders, I hope one and all have survived the holidays and are now making the transition into normal life in a mostly successful manner.

(I won my office’s Fantasy Football championship. That doesn’t have to do with anything specifically, it’s just kinda fun. Especially since Yahoo–which is what the league is run through–gave me a D on my draft and told me I’d end up 7th out of 8th.)

Despite feeling kind of bleh about the idea of goals and arbitrary passages of time and whatnot, I did eventually give in and lay out a general idea for the year. I’m re-introducing non-writing goals (which I didn’t do last year in an attempt to force more writing time, to mixed results) for reading (though I did read my normal 50 books last year–more details on that Thursday or Friday), video games, and art (completely abandoned in 2023).

Writing goals ended up being kind of a combination of last year (NOTHING EXCEPT MY BOOK 1 REVISION RARGH) and previous years. 2023 wasn’t too shabby all things considered, but I did feel like I could have done more if I hadn’t been quite so focused. Sometimes it doesn’t hurt to have a side project to go to if your main one is driving you crazy, you know?

So, for 2024, big projects are working the same as last year–one needs to be finished before we move on to the next. And hopefully we’ll actually finish something.

Book 1 is still the priority, but I’m 75K in (with 40K or so through my critique groups, and the winter marathon starting next week) of a potential 120K, and the later parts of the book have always been in better condition than the early stuff. Then submission materials for it, and, fingers crossed, maybe we’ll get an agent for it by the end of the year (not counting that as a goal, though–should never set goals that rely on other people doing something, that way lies madness).

If Book 1 gets finished, we’ll move to Rings Among the Stars (a scifi horror novella set on a decrepit space station), and then on to Not So Bloody Murder, which is the first book of a paranormal cozy mystery series.

Last year I think I got five revision projects deep, which is crazy pants and apparently I was very optimistic.?Trying to be more realistic this year. RatS is in pretty good shape, just needs some tweaking on the ending, which my betas found a little unrealistic, and NSBM needs a little more meat in the second half of Act 2. I have some beta comments to go over there (which I haven’t looked at yet) and I bought myself a red herrings class through Writer’s Digest to help.

Anyway.

I’m adding in some side projects as well, things that should be easy to do around my revisions and make me feel better about my list of accomplishments at the end of the year. There’s five:

Publish Deep and Blue as a complete novella – Deep and Blue is a scifi novella with some horror elements (my fav, not going to lie) that was originally published as a serial over on Turtleduck Press in…2021, I think. I’m going to combine it into a single story and release it widely. Needs a cover, mostly.
Write some RaTs entries (one a quarter) – RaTs is a prompt system WriYe runs. I’ve used it on and off over the years to do background scenes and side character viewpoints of various universes, which has proved very useful as I go back through Book 1. I’ve traditionally done it monthly, but that does tend to take away from useable big project time, so I’m cutting it down.
SkillShare classes – I think I posted about how SkillShare closed three of my classes back in February because of “lack of engagement” (see above about relying on other people to do things). I wonder if they got a ton of negative feedback because as far as I know they haven’t cut any other classes since then. Anyway, I’ve been reposting the classes, and have one left to put up. Then, assuming SkillShare doesn’t do anything to piss me off again, I’ll do a new class over the summer.
Short Story Challenge – I’m out of short stories. Haven’t written any in a while, as I’ve been focusing on novellas (which can be published serially). I’d like to try my hand at some new ones. Probably set a month later in the year to do a new one a week and see what we end up with.
New Novella Project – Last year I wrote Across Worlds with You as a side project and had a great time, and before that was Deep and Blue and Rings Among the Stars. I’m really digging the novella format, and I’d like to do another one this year, either for posting serially or publishing more traditionally.

As for non-writing goals, for reading I’m doing my standard 50 books a year, which breaks down to four a month (five two months). I’m adding in a requirement to have one book come off my TBR lists (at my library and Goodreads) and one book be one I own, so as to cut down on books just sitting around.

For art, I found a “sketch a week” challenge, so I’m going to give that a try, with the addition of working through an art book (like, a how to book) once every other month. Later in the year, depending on how I’m feeling and how things are going, I may also incorporate learning how to write music.

I’m also going to add back in a video game goal. I tend to hoard games on Steam, and I need to play through some of them instead of just buying more. I’d like to play 20 hours a month, with most of the focus being on the Steam games. (I play Just Dance on the Switch quite a bit, which does not count, and also sometimes play other games there and on the PS5.)

That’s me for 2024! For January specifically I’m continuing the Book 1 revision (the winter critique marathon starts next Monday), working on a cover for Deep and Blue, and re-posting that last SkillShare class. The other goals are ongoing (4 books, 4 pieces of art, video games) but I have picked out the two books for the challenge (a book on older pagan-related Christmas mythology that I’ve had for three years now, and a book off my TBR about DNA solving cold cases) and selected a few Steam games to focus on (two of which I’m partially through).

Hopefully this is all achievable! I hope 2024 is treating you well thus far, and that you achieve all your goals as well!

Happy? Holidays

Howdy howdy, squiders! How are you? Going insane? I may be. Not sure. There does seem to be an endless amount of things needing to be done that are only very slowly getting done.

(For example, tomorrow I will need to pick up the Christmas coffee cake from the bakery, get my dad’s present ready as he’s coming by, and probably I just need to wrap everything else so I can clear out the guest room for my mom to stay the night. Yay.)

I heard something on the radio last week that said that men tend to enjoy the holidays more than women, because women tend to do all the prep work and stressful things, and men just enjoy. And not to be a stereotype, but yes, absolutely. There’s got to be a better way to manage this, but I don’t know what it is.

I am managing to get some non-holiday things done, though. I’ve revised chapters 17 and 18 (which reminds me, I should email chapters out to my critique group for January’s meeting) and I got through all the other people’s mini-marathon contributions. (Only 2, but at 50+ pages each it does take a minute.) AND everyone’s done mine, and generally it sounds like no one saw anything major, so I’ve made a note to go through their comments next week and get ready for the winter marathon, which starts on Jan 3.

All in all, not terrible for December, which is notoriously one of my worst months for productivity. And I’m trying out a new To Do app on my phone, which is going rather well (for the week I’ve had it, anyway). I traditionally use Todoist, but sometimes it gets a little overwhelming if things are building up. I’m trying Microsoft To Do in addition. With To Do, you only see one day and you can pick what’s on there, so I can manage my stress a little better.

I am going to take next week off the blog though–catch up on some things, spend some time with my family, read a book or two, ponder goals for 2024, that sort of thing.

Have a happy holidays, squiders, whatever you celebrate. I’ll see you in the new year.

Promo: A Curse of Magick by Diane Gallagher

Good morning, squiders! We’re less than a week out from Christmas, for those who celebrate, so hopefully your stress levels are relatively low. I’ve reached a general state of low-level panic, which is just going to be what it is.

Today I’ve got a promo for you! Take a look and see if it sounds good to you (or if it sounds like a nice present for someone on your list)!

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Diane Gallagher will be awarding a $15 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

“A desperate princess, a handsome warrior, and an ancient magick to determine their fate.”

As daughter to the High King, love doesn’t come easily to Gráinne. Having turned down hundreds of suitors, she is being forced to marry Finn, an old, ugly yet powerful general. While outside the marriage hall, Gráinne bumps into Diarmuid, Finn’s handsome foster son. From that moment, Gráinne knows if she is to have any chance at love, he is the one she must marry. She begs him to take her away from this unwanted wedding. When Diarmuid refuses, Gráinne, desperate, places a curse on him; help her or die.

Diarmuid is a warrior who only wants to serve loyally, but when the princess sets her sights on him and casts her curse, he must make the most difficult choice of his life. Does he help her, taking their chances with a vengeful Finn, or does her refuse her, leaving her to her fate, and risking his own death?

With both their lives on the line, Gráinne and Diarmuid must fight to use Ireland’s ancient magick to escape from Finn, either bringing them together in passion or in death.

A Curse of Magick is a passionate tale of love, betrayal, revenge, and redemption. A retelling of an ancient Irish myth, A Curse of Magick takes the love and romance of Romeo and Juliet, and the exhilaration of King Arthur, and mixes it together for a satisfying adventure all will love.

Read an Excerpt

“Look, up ahead. It’s the River Shannon.” Sure enough, Gráinne had caught a glimpse of the river sparkling in the distance.

“Then, come on,” Diarmuid shouted as he galloped past her.

Without need of encouragement, Fáelán took off at a gallop close behind Diarmuid.

“Come on, Fáelán, don’t let him beat us,” Gráinne shouted. She felt Fáelán respond beneath her, and they rode as one, hoofbeats hot on the trail of Diarmuid. With each drum of the horse’s hooves on the hardpacked road, Fáelán drew closer and closer until they were even. From the corner of her eye, she saw Diarmuid glance over at her, a grin on his handsome face and one hand holding his cap tight on his head.

“Hyaa!” he shouted, urging his own horse on.

Gráinne grinned. She knew Fáelán was a match for any other beast. As if he knew her thoughts, Fáelán leapt forward in a new burst of energy at Diarmuid’s shout, and pulled ahead, leaving Diarmuid and his horse behind. They rounded a bend and came to a skidding stop right at the edge of the river, with Diarmuid close behind.

Gráinne slid from Fáelán’s back, both of them panting hard. Diarmuid jumped from his horse and landed hard on the grassy bank. He stumbled towards Gráinne, catching his footing just before knocking into her. She watched him struggle to his feet and face her, a breathless grin stretched across his face. She grinned back and they stood, face to face for a few moments, gulping at the cool morning air.

About the Author:

Diane Gallagher is a novelist and Druid priest. She is the author of three novels: A Curse of Magick, Greenwich List, and the Bastard of Saint Genevra. She has long roots stretching into her Celtic past, although she splits her life between two islands—Vancouver Island on the west coast of Canada, and Sicily off the toe of Italy’s boot. She writes young adult romance based on ancient Celtic myths of the powerful women of Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. She currently teaches creative writing at Cherry Hill Seminary.

Website: https://dianegallagherwritings.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dianegallagherwritings
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61551870126755
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLcqpCjIM3A
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dianegallagherwritings/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/diane_writes

Free to read on Kindle Unlimited: https://www.amazon.com/Curse-Magick-Ancient-Women-Celtic-ebook/dp/B0CLRJ98L7/ref=sr_1_1

a Rafflecopter giveaway

See you later this week, squiders!

WriYe and End Times

Hey ho, squiders. How are you? I’m attempting to re-upload one of my SkillShare classes, but the videos are uploading blurry and I can’t figure out why. The originals aren’t blurry, and half the ones that got uploaded are fine. Very frustrating, I don’t have time for this crap.

Working on Chapter 18 of the revision. (There’s thirty chapters, for reference, though I think I may need to add a new one in.) That’s going fine except I’m in an occasional phase I go through where all my sentences sound stupid even though they’re actually fine. Good times. Halfway through one of the other people’s critiques for the mini-marathon.

Have lost track of who I still need to get Christmas presents for, but I hope to wrap some later which should help me remember.

Anyway, let’s do our final WriYe blog prompt for the year.

Sum up your year for us.

It’s December, so it’s That Time. And it makes for easy blog topics at this point every year.

2023 has been, well, very stressful. There was the flood in May and the tornado in June, our furnace died in…Sept? We had to figure out which middle school to send the bigger, mobile one to for next year (good news–he got into the one we wanted. Bad news–no bus.) which is more difficult than usual since he’s 2e. Someone ran into my car in a parking lot two weeks ago. There’s major personnel changes happening at work, which may affect my own role. Both small, mobile ones have had two emergencies this year (one that actually required an ambulance).

I’m just…I’m tired.

Writing wise, well, I hunted down my goals for the year. I did think I was going to get completely through my Book 1 revision, and perhaps another revision, or two! Plus putting together submission materials and actually submitting them. (Here on the blog I thought three whole revisions and submission materials, plus something new for Nano. At WriYe I only committed to two, with the third optional, and then outlining a whole series, revising the first book of that, and THEN writing something new for Nano. On my spreadsheet I had four revisions in the wings.)

(Apparently I forgot how long it takes me to revise. Like, seriously, what was I thinking? Ah, the optimism of late December/early January.)

I also was going to release my novella Deep and Blue (originally released in serial installments), which I did not do but could do pretty easily. I’ll move that to early next year and hopefully remember to do it this time.

I also wrote Across Worlds with You in April, which was not on my list of goals and which has been releasing serially since June, and I sold two short stories.

As for the revisions, well, Book 1 is going well. We’re over halfway done, I’ve been getting feedback on it which is generally positive and has definitely helped me make it better (though maybe slowed the progress down a bit), and I can see the end in sight. I can’t be too sad about it not being done yet. It will be done eventually. And hopefully this is the last major revision I ever have to do on it, though that, too, is sad in its own way.

(There’s always a bit of sadness at the end of a project, a feeling of “what now?” And since I’ve been working on Book 1 on and off for twenty years, I imagine it will hit harder than usual.)

So, hoorah, 2023.

And I shall withhold judgment on 2024 until we get there. Just in case.

Because the last time I was really excited about the possibility of a new year, it was 2019, going into 2020, and we all know how that went.

All right, squiders, see you later!

Promo: Heart Stealer by Melody Wiklund (Review)

Good morning, squiders! Today I’ve got an interesting fantasy novel for you! The concept was so intriguing I asked for and got a copy to review, so scroll to the end to see what I thought!

Fantasy

Date Published: 12-08-2023

Without a heart, death and love are equally impossible.

James’s heart has been stolen. He knows because he got stabbed in the chest and didn’t even bleed. On the plus side, he isn’t dead! On the minus side, whoever has his heart can control him, and until he gets the heart back, he is incapable of feeling love for anyone but the thief. Whoever that may be.

He has to get the heart back, and quickly. But with an assassin in the mix, and a vengeful ex-lover, and a suspicious fiancée, and no idea who to trust or where to look, the task won’t be easy. Especially when, with a stolen heart, he can’t even really trust himself.

About the Author

Melody Wiklund is a writer of fantasy and occasionally romance. In her free time, she loves knitting and watching Chinese dramas. And she’s never summoned a spirit or an assassin… or at least so she claims.

Contact Links

Purchase Links

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Review:

I don’t tend to accept books for review when I do the promos, but I found this concept so interesting. Not sure what it was exactly–the missing heart? The assassin? The cover? (The artwork looks very similar to a friend of mine’s style but apparently is not.)

Anyway, I was interested, and then I got the book in the mail a few weeks later and had completely forgotten I asked for it, and it took me a moment to remember why I had an unexpected book.

This was a quick, interesting read! It’s not terribly plot heavy, but instead spends time exploring each of the characters involved in the interesting matter of James’s missing heart. The world-building is subtle but complex, and the world feels real and believable. Some of the concepts throughout, such as Poor Jane and Cruel Therese, are the kind of interesting mythology that I really dig.

We get to the heart (pun intended) of the matter pretty quickly. When an assassin tries to kill James, they both discover his heart no longer resides in his body. Each chapter is told in a different viewpoint, including (but not limited to): James himself, his would-be assassin Natty, his fiancée, and his jilted lover. Each character is treated as important and we get a good sense of their lives and how they’ve arrived at this place. And each character is different and varied, and each of them adds to the layers of the story.

The plot itself I found a tad predictable, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing (as a writer it tends to be very hard to surprise me, and I have just gotten use to that). But it flows well and kept me engaged and entertained all the way through.

So if you’re looking for a vaguely Victorian fantasy with a hint of mystery, interesting characters, and some neat curses, I’d say take a look at this one!

See you next week, squiders!

Oh no, December

Well, I can’t say I’m surprised, but my month-long Nano streak has died. This happens every year.

Well, I mean, not exactly, I don’t normally work every day in November either. I did this year, but that’s the exception to the rule. But generally no matter how well (or not well) November has gone, I just can’t seem to keep going once December hits.

But anyway, I worked on my story a bit on Friday/Saturday, but not really–I re-read what I had thus far and made a list of chapter summaries, to give out to my critique groups, for people who either haven’t read the earlier chapters or have forgotten what happened. That took…longer than expected. I think I got maybe two sentences of actual progress.

Sunday I played video games all day and was generally not productive.

Yesterday I worked on a couple of side projects and other things I’ve been neglecting, and randomly possibly solved a Book 2 plot issue that has long been a problem for future!Kit. It will need to be explored further, but that is also a problem for future!Kit.

Today is just a mess, and then we’ve got to get serious on Christmas.

I mean, that really is the issue every year. Christmas just requires…so much. I’ve got to figure out presents to give everyone, but I’ve also got to figure out enough of a Christmas list for the rest of the family so I can give suggestions to other family members about what to get my family. (The old just have everyone make a Christmas list thing doesn’t work. Oh no, we can’t possibly risk people potentially buying the same things and…um, probably best to just cut this line of thought off here.) There’s decorations and Christmas cards and pageants and concerts and special events, and yet we’ve still got to bake in enough family time to make sure we’re really getting into the holiday spirit.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Christmas. Or at least the idea of Christmas. But it is exhausting.

(I’ve yet to buy stuff for my work Secret Santa but apparently everyone else has, so that’s adding stress too. I’d like to get to it today but I just really don’t see how that’s going to happen.)

The good news is I’m far enough ahead in the revision that I don’t have to worry about having stuff ready for my critique groups (my in-person one isn’t meeting til January anyway, but I do need to spend some time doing critiques for the December mini-marathon). But it is still hard when I have been on a roll to see that momentum die.

Oh well. What’s a girl to do?

There’s normally some added stress from looking back at what I wanted to get done this year vs what I actually did get done. Luckily this year I was pretty good about it, and didn’t set myself up for failure. My goal was to finish my revision, and while I’m not done, I have written 70K on it, which is more than half, and I’ve gotten good feedback, so it is going well. And progress is the most important thing. So I don’t feel the need to stuff in a couple more resolutions here at the end of the year.

Good job, past!Kit.

Anyway, I’ve just got to remember to give myself some grace, and not stress out too much, and let the month flow the way it needs to.

I’ve got a promo with a review for you on Thursday. See you then!

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!

Books by Kit Campbell