Not As Busy, Still Going
The house has fallen through. This is upsetting on so many different levels, but it also means that I have a LOT less stress and a bit more time to focus on my writing. There's still fallout to deal with: getting youngest into a better school than her home school, cleaning up the financial mess left behind, recovering or adjusting routines that were disrupted and now either need to get back on track or will need to be readjusted to things like youngest's change in schools, and so on and so forth...oh! And unpacking. We had started packing and the house has kind of...fallen apart in the craziness, so, yea, will be cleaning up, de-fleaing, and unpacking again. Not particularly thrilled with how things turned out, but I saw what was coming and got my grieving done before the final ax came down, so I'm angry at what happened (and how), but ready to move forward with what we need to do.
The good news is that I kept up on my Assassin's Choice revisions. I'm halfway through v6 and should have it finished and ready for beta readers by December. At least that's my hope. I've been so focused on A.C. that my other projects have been pretty much set aside for the time being. I might be able to pick them up with less on my mind and less to do, but I'm not going to worry about it if I don't. A.C. deserves to be done; I've been working on it for far too long and it's just time to get it off the plate and maybe out the door.
Why would I hang onto it after it's done? My main concern is the chance of a multi-book contract. I don't see my Alden books taking 2 years or less from start to finish, and most have indicated that 2 years is generally the time expected between books in a series. So I need to get the second book to the point that A.C. is at now before I run A.C. itself around. There may be a day when an Alden book will take 2 years or less, it's just not today. ;)
As for the other novels in process: Blood Charms is ready for me to start the building draft (which is the draft before the rough draft: a lot of information is supposed to go into the building draft, but I'm not sure that's what will happen here), and Phoenix Rising is about ready for the rough. I've not been working on any shorts, and haven't been submitting much either. This is one of those things I knew to drop since the house stress was already making me crazy. Submitting shorts is already a frustrating process, so I really didn't need that on top of the house stuff. I probably won't get back to submissions until the new year. The current focus is A.C., Charms, and Phoenix. Once A.C. is finished, I'll be moving on to book 2 in the trilogy, Quest for Ehlarayn, which is already stripped back and ready for me to get back to work on.
In other news, the husband is in culinary school and very happy. Unfortunately, he also lost his job, which is actually only bad because of the lack of a paycheck. The job itself was making him miserable and being run in an unethical manner. We plan to report and sue, it's just taking us time to get it all figured out...and to find a lawyer. In the meantime, he's looking for work in the industry. He's not done a resume snow storm as of yet since midterms are a big concern for him right now, but he's started putting a few out, and the school will be holding a career fair especially for its culinary students next week, I believe. We're looking forward to it. In the meantime, we're looking a little on our as well.
So, it's going to take some time to get us back on our feet, especially with the job situation the way it is, but I'm ready to move forward and work on it. And to get back to a full schedule of writing.
