Looking Back

• Depending on the feedback from my critique partners, either fix or start finalizing Penelope Standing 2. If there aren’t major changes, I should be able to hit publish by the end of the month. It’s published! You can purchase it here: https://books2read.com/PenelopeStanding2 
• Finalize the Jackpot Drift short story reader magnet and figure out enough of Book Funnel to make it available for download for anyone getting the newsletter. Done!
• Send out a newsletter! Done!
• Get through the rewrite on Chaos Connection (Jackpot Drift #2). I have a plan and things feel like they are moving in the right direction. Not quite done, but it’s close!
• Covers 101 class! I’m learning things, but it’s a fair amount of work. Also, InDesign is just not intuitive for me. Done!
• Clean up and submit the next chapters of Charlie’s Angels in space Unguided Flight. The book has a tentative title, but I still need a series name. Done! (Except I still don’t have a series name.)

Even beyond my stated goals, it was a busy month (I said goodbye to the little dog this week, finish my day job tomorrow, executed an art heist, etc. etc.), so I’m pleased with my progress.

Moving Right Along…

Goals for July!

• Finish the Chaos Connection (Jackpot Drift #2) rewrite and get it out to my critique partners. I feel like I owe them each a bottle of their favorite spirits for putting up with me. But I think the book maybe is turning out well? In any case, it’s not the disaster it used to be.
• Send out another newsletter. I’m sure I’ll have something to talk about in a few weeks, right?
• Get the first 30k words written for the Vella serial currently titled Dragon Freehold. It has thieves, magic, dragons, and much more! I started writing this today, and it is good cheesy fun and such a joy to write. I have no idea if Vella will be a viable platform for authors, but this particular serial may be addicting.
• Writing Fiction Sales Copy class. It’s put on by the same people who did the Covers101 class. It will likely be very painful, but my sales copy needs help and this is going to force me to get better.
• Outline the next Penelope Standing mystery.

Speaking of Penelope Standing Mysteries, Did I Forget To Mention Something?

Are you a fan of witty banter, dogs that steal scenes (and a lot of food), a mature couple in love, crafting disasters, or cozy mysteries in general? Check this one out!

Death Tracks the Scent is available anywhere books are sold online, and the brick & mortar bookstore might even be able to order a physical copy. I don’t know. The ways of retail are a mystery to me. Your library can definitely buy a digital copy, though! Let’s hear it for libraries!

Happy May Day! As usual, before I get to my goals for this month, it’s time to look back and see how I did on last month’s goals.

April Goals

• Finish the read-aloud editing pass of THE CHAOS JOB (the actual title of the sheep heist novel) and send it off to my copyeditor. Not only did I do this, but I published the book! 
• New words: add 30k to the next Penelope Standing mystery. Added about 32k words and finished the first draft this morning.
• Send out a newsletter. (At some point this will actually happen.) I did this! 
• Clean up and submit the next chapter of Charlie’s Angels in space. Got this one done, too!

All in all, April was a productive month for me. I’m giving myself an A+. And now… onward!

May Goals

• Clean up the current draft of Penelope Standing 2 (tentatively titled Death Tracks the Clue… ugh, why are titles so hard?) and send it out to WF for feedback.
• Write the short story reader magnet for Jackpot Drift. This will be a freebie for newsletter subscribers. It takes place between The Chaos Job and the next Jackpot Drift book, and will be from the viewpoint of one of the other characters.
• Start edits on the second Jackpot Drift book — there are some major structural changes that need to happen, so this will require some thought.
• Covers 101 class! I’m taking a 6 week workshop on creating covers. Given my (lack of) artistic talent, I doubt that I’ll get to the point where I would release books with covers I’ve made, but I’d like to have a better grasp of how to evaluate covers, and I’d also like to be able to create adequate covers for things like reader magnet freebies.
• Clean up and submit the next chapter of Charlie’s Angels in space. (I really ought to come up with a title for this thing at some point…)

I think that pretty much covers it.

Gratuitous Pet Picture

When chaos and luck collide…

Silver just wants to steal her shipment back. With a little help from an enemy soldier and one messed up AI, she might just save the colony at the same time! (Jackpot Drift, Book 1)

This book has something for everyone! There’s romance, intrigue, secret gods, not-secret gods, gods that are purely theoretical but might destroy the galaxy, snarky AIs, sheep, goats, and a bicycle chase!

Reviews

Hey, I’m not a big enough name (and definitely not organized enough) to have any real reviews, so here are some random things people (okay, really just Paul, who has a fairly warped sense of humor) have said about this book:

“Sheep opera” — Paul Austin Ardoin, who may not understand the finer points of science fiction categories since he writes hardboiled mysteries.

“It’s like Ocean’s 11 but with a big vat of alien sheep sperm instead of millions of dollars in a casino vault. And with a malfunctioning AI in the Brad Pitt role.” — Paul Austin Ardoin. Again, he writes mysteries, so I think he may have missed some of the subtleties, including the fact that “big”, “vat”, and “alien” are inaccurate, but other than that, it’s completely true.

Alternative Title

I really wanted to call this book Ovine Eleven, but there weren’t eleven people on the team, and I didn’t feel up to adding a bunch of new characters. Maybe someday I’ll create a spin-off…

Available Now!

If any of this sounds intriguing, The Chaos Job is available wherever you get your books, as long as that isn’t a second-hand book shop. I hope you enjoy it!

Here we are again! Time to look back and see which goals I completely forgot I set last month…

• Sheep heist read-aloud editing pass. I’m somewhere between the one-half and two-thirds mark. It should be done in ten days or fewer.
• Flesh out the mystery outline (1 week) and then start writing (goal of 20k this month) Outline is finished and I made it to just under 19k yesterday.
• Send out a newsletter. (I only have something like five subscribers — hello, subscribers! — but I should start making it a habit.) This… did not happen.
• Read/critique the submission for the novel group, and submit the first chapter of… something… for the other group. Maybe I’ll work through the unnamed space opera. I’m not sure yet. This did happen. I went with the space opera that I am describing as Charlie’s Angels in space.

April Goals

• Finish the read-aloud editing pass of THE CHAOS JOB (the actual title of the sheep heist novel) and send it off to my copyeditor.
• New words: add 30k to the next Penelope Standing mystery.
• Send out a newsletter. (At some point this will actually happen.)
• Clean up and submit the next chapter of Charlie’s Angels in space.

The cover is ready to go on THE CHAOS JOB (and it’s exactly what I asked for and I love it!). I may need to fiddle with the interior formatting of the book a bit, but it’s entirely possible it could get released this month. (I love how other authors know how long something is going to take and can actually set up pre-orders and schedule promotions. Ha! Maybe someday I will be that prepared…)

My new laptop has also arrived, so there will be some time spent setting that up, but at least I won’t keep having moments of “will this ever charge again?” panic like I’ve been having with the current laptop for a while.

It’s hard to believe, but another month has gone by. If I didn’t have these goal posts (ha! see what I did there?), I might not notice. So how did I do in February?

• Do the structural sheep heist edits. Done, though I may make more changes on the read-aloud editing pass.
• Turn in the sheep heist cover art info sheet. (This sounds like it should be simple, but it means I have to have the back cover copy written, and… whew, that’s a thing.) I don’t have a slot with the artist until August, but if everything is ready to go, they might be able to slot me in earlier. I did this. Hopefully they are understanding and believe me when I say that I have no idea what I’m doing and if they have a better idea they should tell me. Cover art is hard.
• Finish outlining the second Penelope Standing mystery. (Mostly done. It might have been finished, but a new T. Kingfisher novel was released yesterday, so my productivity took a nosedive while I read a fluffy romance with rotting corpses.)

March Goals

• Sheep heist read-aloud editing pass.
• Flesh out the mystery outline (1 week) and then start writing (goal of 20k this month)
• Send out a newsletter. (I only have something like five subscribers — hello, subscribers! — but I should start making it a habit.)
• Read/critique the submission for the novel group, and submit the first chapter of… something… for the other group. Maybe I’ll work through the unnamed space opera. I’m not sure yet.

Space Kittens

Now that February and Thingadailies are over, I’m no longer doing a space-kitten-a-day photo manipulation, but it was fun (and funny!) while it lasted.

Before the new goals, it’s time to evaluate how January went.

• Get started on the sheep heist edits. This is the first book I plan to publish this year, and I’d love to have it on track for a March release. Well… I brought everything up and looked at it, and started thinking of ways to deal with parts I need to fix, so I guess I got close?
• Finish the rough draft of the second sheep heist book and do a consistency edit so things make sense. Done
• Stretch goal! Outline the next Penelope Standing mystery. I have the overall structure planned, and six chapters outlined. For me that’s a feat that outshines all failures.

I’m going to give myself a passing grade. I would have liked to get more done on the edits, but frankly, there was just so much happening in January that it’s a miracle I was able to concentrate at all. So now on to this month!

February Goals

• Do the structural sheep heist edits.
• Turn in the sheep heist cover art info sheet. (This sounds like it should be simple, but it means I have to have the back cover copy written, and… whew, that’s a thing.) I don’t have a slot with the artist until August, but if everything is ready to go, they might be able to slot me in earlier.
• Finish outlining the second Penelope Standing mystery.

Space Kittens

For fun and hilarity, I’m also playing with photo editing software in a series I’m calling “Space Kittens”. This is the first in the series…

 

Here we are in a brand new year (according to whatever calendar this is)! More importantly, we’re in a new month, which means I get to reflect on how I did last month.

December, revisited

• Get the cozy mystery novella in shape for a copy edit. It’s not my usual sort of thing, but it was fun to write and I’m planning on turning it into a trilogy. I knocked this one out of the park! (see below)
• I have the feedback from my editor on the sheep heist novel, so I’m going to be going through those notes and making a plan to address the things that need to be addressed. January will be an excellent time to work on this…
• Put an ending on the novel I was working on in November. (Not that I would forget where it was going or anything, but…) I did work on this, but it is not finished. It’s close. I should have it done by tomorrow, which gives me almost two weeks to do some consistency edits before I hand it off to my writing group for the first glance.

So I got a little sidetracked and completely ignored some of my goals. Also, I was expecting to get a little more done during my week of vacation. Either I really needed to have a week or doing nothing, or I’m just more productive when I have to work my day job. I’d like to think it’s the former, but I suspect it’s the latter.

Speaking of Cozies

I was enjoying the editing part enough that I put the finishing touches on the cozy novella and published it right before Christmas. If cozy mysteries are something you enjoy, check it out!

January Goals

• Get started on the sheep heist edits. This is the first book I plan to publish this year, and I’d love to have it on track for a March release.
• Finish the rough draft of the second sheep heist book and do a consistency edit so things make sense.
• Stretch goal! Outline the next Penelope Standing mystery.

Pet Pictures

It’s been cloudy and grey lately, and I’ve just had the same picture of my pets sleeping. But it’s always a good time to revisit this picture. Some friends were fostering these kittens, and I was playing with photo manipulation. May your 2021 bring health and happiness!

We all know November was National Novel Writing Month, and the goal was to write 50,000 new words during the month. I hit 50,281 in the second sheep heist novel on 11/29, so that’s another NaNoWriMo “win” in the books. I still have another 20-30k to add to get it to the end and fill in some things I skipped past along the way, but 50k is a pretty solid chunk of the book.

December Goals

• Get the cozy mystery novella in shape for a copy edit. It’s not my usual sort of thing, but it was fun to write and I’m planning on turning it into a trilogy.
• I have the feedback from my editor on the sheep heist novel, so I’m going to be going through those notes and making a plan to address the things that need to be addressed.
• Put an ending on the novel I was working on in November. (Not that I would forget where it was going or anything, but…)

May your month of December be safe, cozy, and warm!

(No, I don’t understand how this could be comfortable either.)