What I’m working on and how it’s going. Hint: it’s going.

Winter is always an interesting time for me. Some seasons, NaNoWriMo gets me primed for productivity. Go me!

Sometimes, like this winter so far, it’s like herding a greased squirrel through a rat maze.

As I race down the branching corridors of my ADHD/SAD/Peri?Menopausal mind, flitting here and there, running into metaphorical and literal walls — I mean, was that door frame always there? — I’m desperate to catch the squirrel of my distractions, wrestle the little sucker into submission and get motivated.

That’s not to say progress has not been made.

Possibilities- now titled The Trouble with Possibilities– is slated for release sometime this summer. The goal is to finish up this last round of revisions and send it out for final copy and proofreading. Then there’s the formatting and cover finalization and marketing and…Oh! My poor neglected WIP.

Said WIP is titled All the Brightness. I’m knee deep in the murky middle, constantly reminding myself that this draft is purely telling myself the story. Poor Kiki and Reggie, though. I’m challenging myself to write imperfect characters, neither of whom are bad people, until circumstances and their own tendencies get them into real trouble. Like death and prison trouble.

And I am constantly recalling one of my favorite college professor’s advice: Don’t Lose the Story! Guess that’s one of the challenges when I’m writing about my horse disease. Spending too much time on meaningless (for the story) details. Do readers really want to know the difference between dressage show braids and hunter ones? Maybe????

After a demoralizing visit to the query trenches, Pieces of the Wreckage is back out with a few beta readers. going to have to decide its fate once that’s done. Most likely a few more revisions and then I’ll see where I am in this publishing journey.

Oh, and there’s a whole rom-com trilogy that was my NaNoWriMo project for this year. The plan is for those to join Possibilities on the self-publishing track.

I haven’t forgotten my friends Elle and Daniel of Lucifer’s Child either. They are being revised again as well.

Where do I find the time? I don’t. Hence the greased squirrel. And why I am so dang slow.

Wait. What about my other fantasy ideas. I have a mermaid short story half done, a dragon book idea, and My Crappy Fantasy Novel is always lurking in the drawer, waiting for me to fix and finish it.

Yeah, instead of AI, could there be a way to simply extract these ideas from my neural space to the page? I mean, my keyboarding skills get better every day, but sheesh!

On the personal front, after a disastrous end to the summer horse-wise (one broken leg and one colic surgery $$$$!!!), the high point was meeting my grandson. Yes, grandson. OMG. My spawn has spawned. He did wait until I was over 40 as I asked, but wait, aren’t I younger than 40? Sadly, not. But time is simply a construct, right?

Right?

All of this rambling is simply to say that 2024 will be the year of my publishing debut, and with so many projects in the works, there is a guarantee of more and more and more.

*This is where that little voice pipes up and says: if you like my writing and still want to read more after you finish Possibilities and if you do, I’ll go all Sally Field and squeal a bit. Please?