Work In Progress 2008
We had a wonderful holiday, but I'm glad it's over. My oldest daughter and her family came down on Christmas Eve and spent a few days with is, middle daughter was over for the day with her boyfriend (who left right after we ate), and the kids father was out for about a week or so. The gift pile was just scary, even taking into account there were a lot of people doing the giving and a couple of extra people receiving. Not much writing done in December at all--just too busy. The kids went back to school on January 3, and I've spent most of this last week trying to catch up on a few things. But now it's time to get back into the groove...or to find a groove to get back into. ;)
My first priority is A.C., which I want done and out to beta readers by November. It's a late date, but I have the current v4/v5 combined revision I'm doing to finish, then some major changes for one of the characters to make in a v6 revision. I'm keeping a to do list for v6 as I work through v4/v5. Most of it is nit picky things, but I'm changing the race of a character (dropping the previous race completely out of the Alden world) and that will require some larger changes. I suspect beta readers will find places where I missed things. ;)
I'm also working on Phoenix Rising. The notes draft is going pretty well, but is minus notes and I suspect has some redundancy. I'll finish it, print it, make notations of what needs to be fixed, and revise the notes draft before moving on to the building draft. I need to work on world building for it (and A.C. as well). I've also got Stolen Priest out for me to look at, but it's a pretty low priority for me right now.
Nine shorts are in various stages of being worked on: "A Single Parent In A Married Relationship" (essay), "Blood Whispers" (Vampire), "The Reckoning" (SF), "Gift of Writing" (Supernatural), "Magda" (??), "Iris" (SF), "Rebuilding After Rejection" (Article; being updated), "Promises" (Vampire), and "Fairy Dragon" (brand new Fantasy). Most of these are in various stages of being revised, although "Fairy Dragon" is so new the rough isn't finished. Several are a couple of years old, which is my problem with shorts--they aren't a priority for me. They'll eventually get done; I'm just not one to impose deadlines on them since they tend to get pushed aside more frequently for other things.
The only other project to worry about is fixing Alden.nu. I tried to give it a start this morning, but there's a problem with the MT install, so I have to wait until the fella who handles the server gets back online to fix it for me. Alden.nu will take awhile to get back together anyway--most of the areas that have problems have to be restored page by page. That's a lot of pages to have to get back online.
Goals for 2008:
» 450,000 words
» Finish A.C. and get it out to whole book readers
» Finish Phoenix rough draft and revisions to v3
» at least 1 professional publication (no, I never learn)
» finish "Letters", "Single Parent", and "Blood Whispers"
» write 6 new shorts
» read 1 book a month
The only thing I'm worried about on that list is the 6 new shorts, but the rest should be quite manageable. :)
