It's JUUUUUNNNNEEE!!!
Actually, I'm more like "It's
Summer!" because if I measure my year by individual months, I've
found it goes by way too quickly.
But summer is HERE. Summer is NOW. And
SO HELP ME I AM GOING TO WRITE AND GET ALL THE THINGS DONE before I
return to work again!
Life Stuff
First of all, there's a bit of "life
stuff" going on, even in the period of time when I'm not
working. Namely, it's the impending remodel of one of the bedrooms in
our house--one that I'm going to move into, so I've got the
responsibility of decorating and setting it up for myself! It's got a
little reading nook, plenty of wall space for MORE BOOKSHELVES
(because goodness knows I need that!) and I'm just really excited to
have a space that's so entirely my
own! (I have lots of siblings... you have no idea...) So that's
taking up a lot of time.
Which
brings me to my next point of order: Word Count Updates.
The
last two months have been less-than-stellar. It's officially been a
year since I started using WordKeeper Alpha and I must say, it's been
GREAT to be able to see progress, no matter how small! That being
said... Well, I'll let the graph speak for itself.
 |
| For reference... the 25K line is supposed to be my goal every month... haven't hit it since January... |
Dismal,
right? But I am going to do my almighty best to get in more of a
groove! It still boggles me how I'm going to set up a writing habit
that I can also maintain while working full-time, but I am fully
confident that I'll reach that goal eventually! I have told myself
that if I can just make it to 20K for this month, I will count that
as a success. (Just a few thousand words away!)
RELEASES!
This
month held plenty of excitement, as not only did Forest of
the Fearless officially release
(making the fourth anthology
to contain a story I wrote!) but also a fellow writer and very dear
friend released her book
just this week, which I am beyond excited
to recommend to all of you, my readers!
It's the first book in a
series called The Time Tree Chronicles, and
this particular book is called The Emergence by Lisa Rae Morris and
if you like time travel, quiet forests, Scottish countrysides, and
funny old people in nursing homes, then I would highly advise you to
take a closer look! I still remember when she first brought it up,
she was all "I have this idea and you're probably going to think
it's weird and it totally doesn't make sense to me and I'm wondering
if I should even be writing it..." and the moment I heard it, I
responded, "DEAR HEAVENS PLEASE WRITE IT I NEED THIS
IN MY LIFE!!" and now it's
a wish come true!
What's
next? How about another release?
That's right! Dangerous Damsels and Fatal Femmes is
coming to you soon, from the Dreamtime Fantasy Authors, the same
group who brought you Dreamtime Dragons back
in 2017! I'll be sure and update when I've got an official date, so
you don't miss it!
CURRENT
EVENTS: Blog Hop & Author Takeover
So the
more astute followers might know that The Upstream Writer is
currently almost finished with the Bookish Summer Blog Hop of 2019.
Only a few days more to go, so if you haven't gotten on it yet, then
scurry on over to the >Intro Post< where I've linked all the
posts from the last month! We've had some pretty unique questions
that I've had a lot of fun answering!
ALSO,
if you want to actually be able to interact with me LIVE (as in, I'm
going to read your
Now to
get down to the more serious, accountability side of business...
Writing
The
Last Inkweaver
How
can a project be both "closer than ever" and "farther
away" from an actual freaking ending???
Not even kidding, it probably took me these last two months to get
through that whole conversation with Jacqueline, in which I thought
at first that I was going to be able to reveal a bunch of stuff, but
that required a lot of thinking and rethinking (and overthinking) to
ensure that revealing all of it at this point would still make sense
and seem like a logical progression for the conversation... only to
realize, when I finally arrived at said point in the conversation,
that it was really too much information to dump all at once, and that
I could actually move it to a later point... Which then makes the
scenes-to-come longer than I originally anticipated... Chapter 31, as
it stands, is a beast. My beta readers are definitely going to hate
me (if I don't burn them out in the first 30 chapters, that is...)
But with that done, I can finally bring Matthias onto the scene, send
them into "Oblivion" (in more ways than one!), and get on
with it, at last! Here's hoping it doesn't take
me the next two months to finish this!!
Red,
The Wolf: The Series
It's
official! Red, The Wolf
is coming to The Upstream Writer's Serial Saturday lineup, at last!
Unfortunately, that teaser I posted a few months ago is now obsolete,
since I decided to scrap that and go with another one. BUT this also
meant that I went ahead and continued it--and now that I'm officially
posting it, this means that I'm going to carry it through all the way
to the end! I can't wait for you to meet this awesome character! I
hope you all enjoy the series as much as I have in my own head!
Full of intense action, a shapeshifter who isn't really accustomed to being vulnerable and helpless, a swindling peddler who is used to pulling the wool over everyone's eyes, and a fortune teller who can see past the surface, to the true nature of everyone she meets... It's "Red Riding Hood" like you haven't seen it yet!
A
Writer's Tale, Book 3: The Sheriff's Showdown
Excuse
me? Do you really
think I'm so shameless that I would plunk out a grand total of half a scene on this project after not touching it for months,
just so I could give an update
on it today?
Yeah.
I'm totally that shameless. (It was almost a thousand words in a single go, how could I resist?)
While
I am pressuring myself to get The Last Inkweaver done, I also find
that I really kind of want to finish this one, too... just so I can
get onto the next one, really. (That's kind of been the case for
pretty much every single book in this series... go figure...)
Honestly, the true motivator would probably be Wattpad, and the fact
that I've only got one active
story that I'm updating anymore, and not really any feedback as to
what else people want to see me posting. Meanwhile, my old stuff is
still getting votes and adds and whatnot so it's not all terrible...
I just feel like I don't have a "Wattpad Wednesday" when
I'm not really updating on there!
Wattpad
Speaking
of which, let me bring you all up to speed with what I have on here:
My
current in-progress work that I'm updating regularly still is the
FLASHES OF INSPIRATION. Mostly I'm just copying from what I have
already posted on here, which you can find under "Flash Fictions"... but I will have you know, I just finished a
brand-new flash-fic that I won't be posting here on the blog, but I
will add to the
Wattpad version... so you might want to keep your eye over there (or
keep an eye out on the Flash Fictions page on here, because I'll be
adding the link) for when I post it!
There
is still the SOUND OF AN ECHO, a Percy Jackson fanfic that I started,
that I probably really should finish eventually someday... I got
Percy and Annabeth and a few other campers to leave Camp Half-Blood
on their quest, after a whole bunch of prophecies, and there's no
telling (because I haven't gotten any feedback at all) whether or not
my clues and hints were obvious or not. I still do have all the notes
and stuff, so I do know how all the prophecies play out, and most of
all, how it ends. It's just that "middle" part, the part
where they're supposed to "meet up with allies" or
"encounter opposition" where I am a little fuzzy on the
details... Maybe if I really wanted to challenge myself, I could sit
down and see how much of it I can pound out... So that's another
WIP to add to my docket! Will I
have time to write all of these? Who even knows anymore?
Reading
Hoo
boy...
So May
was a dismal failure, as far as reading goes. I was so exhausted by
work every single week and so busy on the weekends trying to get
caught up on everything that I barely had time to read at all, and I
didn't end up finishing a single book for the whole month!
Finally,
here at the end of June, I've had enough time to finish Angel
Tormented, the third book in the LouisiAngel series by C. L. Coffey. It was everything I hoped it
would be, and so much that I was totally not expecting! I also
brought along You Left Me No Choice by
Kelly Blanchard (Book 5 in her Chronicles of Lorrek series!) on a car
trip yesterday, and got from "halfway through" to "nearly
finished" so that's another review coming possibly next week!
Other than that... I still have
a few more "bought" books that I must finish before I allow
myself to return to the library--it hurts so bad! Feels almost like a
punishment... But now that I'm on summer break, I keep telling myself
I have more time for reading, so no more excuses!
And
that's where I'm at with everything! How about you? What are you
writing or reading? Feel free to comment with a little update! Do you
have any questions for me about anything I've mentioned here? Ask
them, and I'll answer to the best of my ability! As always...
Catch
You Further Upstream!
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