It’s been a hectic month here, with multiple vacations, deadlines, NaNoWriMo, and various other happenings that have kept me so busy. So this update will be short as I try to catch up on all the hours I spent having fun.

After a couple of late-night sessions, several discarded drafts, a fresh stack of “aged” paper, a fit as I tried to change my PDF to a TIFF, and another fit when I realized I had not used Drop Box in ages and forgot how to send files through that app, the epistolary story I started over the summer was finally completed and sent off to Wayward Raven for their consideration. I have been instructed by my wife to stick to writing regular stories, since the amount of time and work that went into hand-crafting every page was exhausting. I made no promises. But I do admit that it was tremendously time-consuming. In the end, the finished product looks great, the story came out exactly how I wanted it to, and I am really proud of the final version. The title of this story is Ideal Bounds, taken from a line in Frankenstein (also an epistolary story, and a book that is referenced a few times in my piece), and that was a last-minute decision. But it really works within the theme, though the meaning different from the source, and it has an old-world feel that fits with the setting of the story. Hopefully they like it as much as I do.

Next up is NaNoWriMo. Unfortunately, I did not even come close to the goal of 50,000 words. A lot of that is due to 12 days of vacations with my family. I still managed to get 20,000 words done, but I never got into a good flow with the project I chose for this month. Still, I got through several chapters, did a tremendous amount of plotting, research, and dialoging, and feel like I got book 2 off to a decent start. It’s not pretty, some of it downright bad, but I got the narrative to a good place, introduced a couple of new characters who I am really proud of, and feel like I found the heart of the story pretty early on. So even though I did not achieve the word count goal, I am still thrilled with what I did accomplish.

Adding to my work pile – I found another anthology that had a theme I found interesting, so I am going to try and crank out a story for that one. It is only 5,000 words, but the deadline is the end of December so I will have to work a little faster than I usually do to meet that deadline. Even if I don’t get it done in time to submit it, I like the story idea enough that I will finish it and save it for another time. The anthology is called The Map of Lost Places, and I chose a local legend as the backbone of my story.

Okay, now you are all caught up. Did I say this would be short? Sorry about that, I’m just a bit too verbose when I get on a roll. The end of 2023 is approaching, and with it is the holiday season and resolutions for the new year. I’m already thinking about those – I told you I like to plan ahead – and I will share them in my last Writing Update for 2023. So now you have something to look forward to. Until then, keep doing things the write way.

(April 8th, 2024: I was forced to turn off commenting on this post due to frequent spamming. Sorry!)