And so summer cruises to a conclusion, in a haze of heat, school supplies, and vacation photographs. In my writing world, a few things have been happening.
First, I’m happy to announce that Tisiphone’s Quest will be very soon be available via print-on-demand! Like… next week, if everything goes well. All the thanks are due Maria Fowler for eagle-eyed editing and saving me a lot of nervous flailing by preparing the book files.
Revision continues on Fairy Hills, now on page 150/267, with total word count just over 78k. Obviously not going to make my end-of-summer goal with this one, but I’m pleased with the work. These characters are so damn cute, and the whole thing is ridiculously fun. I am in awe of writers who produce deeply meaningful and affecting works of literature, but that’s not something I feel I can reasonably aim. This is a fun story, and I’m fond of it.
I have continued to faff about with background material for the Arthurian series, as it seems determined to become. Trying to just let stuff simmer rather than force a third book’s outline into being before it wants to form. I am torn between being pleased with the idea of self-pubbing the first one because I love this book so much and would like everyone to get a chance to meet it in whatever form, and fretting over the inadequacies it undoubtedly contains. Regardless, finishing book 2 is up on the docket once Fairy Hills is in reasonable shape.
Finally, I am trying to decide if I want to do NaNoWriMo again this year. I don’t have an idea tugging at me so far. I do have a large backlog of half-drafted ideas at this point, so I’m hardly in any danger of running out of things to work on. On the other hand, half of those ideas are shelved for some future life in which I have a lot more time in which to do research.
We shall see. I hope everyone has enjoyed the end of their summer!
R Jean Stevenson 