Get thee behind me, June!!!

So June is over and we’re into July, which means it’s time to take a look at the month gone past in terms of writing, and offer some other news items of note, first from my part of the world and then from other writers!

:: Numbers? We got ’em!

Final June #amwriting tally. 'Twas a bit of a rocky month!

The main project was drafting the second “GhostCop” novel, and in those terms, June was productive, but not greatly productive. It was not a bad month from a writing perspective, not bad at all. It wasn’t great, either. I basically made my targets and that’s about it. There’s nothing wrong with that. There were some days when the writing was harder than others, especially one stretch toward the end of the month when external-world concerns piled on to make writing especially difficult. Basically, The Wife had to work a number of very early-in-the-morning shifts, which screwed up everybody’s sleep schedules. I’m not super militant about needing my eight hours a night, but 4.5 to 5 hours for three or four consecutive nights increasingly takes its toll on me. But I soldiered through and still managed to average over 1000 words a day for June.

I also only had one zero-word count day, but on that day I sat down and did some “prep” work, making some notes about characters and ironing out the backstory that comes into play in the book’s third act and generally nailing down what all the various conflicts are in the book. There are more moving parts in this story than I had originally expected, but it should all play out in a pretty explosive way toward the end. At least that’s the current hope! As I write this (July 2, but it will appear on July 5), I have finished drafting the first act of the book and am on to the second. I hope to have the draft done by the end of August.

:: The focus this fall, starting in September, will be the publication prep for GhostCop Book One and Amongst the Stars, both of which will appear this fall. Hooray!

:: But I’ll also be starting another series of space opera adventures! I’ll say more about this as time passes, but it’s set in the Forgotten Stars universe. The stories will likely not intersect in any meaningful way; I’m setting them in the same universe mainly because I want to use the established world-building I already have in place. As Lt. Uhura once pointed out on Star Trek, “It’s a big galaxy!” So I might as well keep playing in it. I ‘ve been doing some plot-noodling and generating information on my characters, because this is going to be a Firefly kind of adventure series, with a spaceship and her intrepid crew having exploits. And I’ve even been sketching the ship! Move over, Millennium Falcon! Take a back seat, Serenity! Meet Orion’s Huntress, soon to be one of the iconic ships in all science fiction!

Spaceship for an upcoming space opera series I plan to write! (The ship's tentative name? Orion's Huntress.) #spaceopera #SpaceshipsAreAwesome #amwriting

:: Nifty blogger and writing cohort Faith Rivens recently read both Stardancer and The Wisdomfold Path, and she graciously reviewed both, here and here, respectively. Check them out! And then read the books, because they’re good! Other people say so!

:: A few months ago I first heard the term “bullet journal”. This has nothing to do with firearms. It’s a specific way of using a journal to enhance your daily like and productivity. Blogger and writer Coryl O’Reilly explains.

:: Ksenia Anske on taking long breaks between drafts. I absolutely believe in doing this. I wait at least three months between first draft and first manuscript markups, and most times I wait even longer than that. Distance makes seeing the flaws easier.

:: It’s required by law that I link this, so here it is: George RR Martin and Stephen King sit down and chat.

It’s a grand world out there, Writerfolk!!!

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