As always, it’s time to grade myself on how I did the month before. I did sort of change my plans in the middle of the month, so this may not be pretty…
Do the read-aloud and grammar-checking pass of Penelope Standing #3 (Title: Death Sniffs a Rose, unless I change it), and send it off for proofreading.Get at least another six episodes of Dragon Freehold edited, proofread, and loaded so I don’t have to worry about that during November. (I have another 14 already written, so this shouldn’t be too hard.)They just returned from the proofreader a couple of days ago, so I still need to load them.Firm up the Jackpot Drift #3 outline and start drafting. I’ll be using 50k of that as my NaNoWriMo novel, but it should end up around 80k and it needs to be ready to send to my critique group on the 9th of December. So… Doing the math on that, I should probably be about 20k into the book before November starts.This was one of the things I changed my mind on. I decided to go with the spirit of NaNoWriMo and draft the whole book in November. (I have what I think is a good outline — 2500 words per day is not really a stretch when I don’t have a day job.)- Work on the outline for the prequel to the next series — it’s set in current times, except moving portals (“curtains”) open semi-randomly and allow passage to alternate versions of earth — until they disappear again. The main character is a veterinarian, dealing with new species and the changes that come when society is disrupted in this way. Anyhow, it will be a ton of fun to rewrite this series and get it out there, but I also need to change a whole lot. I did not look at this at all.
- Redo the keywords on the remaining books. I think I might have done one book, but I definitely didn’t finish this.
Send out the newsletter with the cozy short story.- Write another Jackpot Drift short story as a newsletter bonus. Didn’t do it.
Finish up the Penelope Standing Christmas novella (Death Trims the Tree) and send it to my critique partners.
So… I think I did reasonably well. Maybe a B, if I’m being generous. But I also wrote a 15-episode Kindle Vella story to test some things, so there’s an extra 20k in there. (It’s under a pen name in a different genre. It’s probably better if I don’t get into it here. My mom could read this.)
And I published the third Penelope Standing mystery — Death Smells a Rose! (But wow, I need to start planning my book launches…)
November 2021 Goals
- Draft the third book in the Jackpot Drift series. I’m aiming for 75-80k, but I have yet to hit the target I’m aiming for.
- Publish the holiday novella Death Trims the Tree.
- Apply for a BBFD for the first Penelope Standing book. Depending on how they do the page count, Death Walks a Dog might be too short for BookBub, but you never know.
Oof. That’s probably more than enough to get through this month. I’ll likely add on some other things as time permits, but drafting the book will be my main goal.
Obligatory Pet Picture
It rained. Somebody was not amused…
