My Writing Plan: Week of Dec 2

I did it!! I finished NaNoWriMo… on my birthday, no less! I won’t bore you with details, because I already wrote a blog post about it, you can read it here though! But here’s the Cliff’s Notes version: I WON NaNo with 50,257 words… I finished A CAT FOR TROY and I finished WHEN DARKNESS FALLS during the course of November. With the proviso that neither of these are “done” … it means I’ve gotten the stories written from The Beginning to The End. There’s still a lot of work to be done before they are ready to be sent out for queries.

I took off the last 3 days since finishing NaNo from any kind of writing or editing. Complete break. I did a little building in SecondLife, adding a new scene to my Holodeck. I also loaded up all my Christmas music onto SAM Cloud, and finished up my December author’s newsletter (which I need to remember to send today, btw). So today I’m taking a look at where I’m at, and what I should be doing next.

To add a little excitement into the mix, sometime in the next few days we should be hearing the winners of Melody of Love Contest, in which WISHES IN A BOTTLE was a finalist, and also the finalists of the Emilly Contest will be announced, in which I had several manuscripts entered. So… nail-biting nervous excitement over that!

Manuscript Status:

Three Finished Manuscripts, ready to send:
1. Wishes in a Bottle, 1st book of Wishes & Dreams 3-book series
2. SwanSong; 1st book of Sons of the Desert 4-book series
3. Castles in the Sand; 2nd book of Sons of the Desert
Three Finished Manuscripts, revisions in progress:
1. A Gift of Jacinth; 2nd book of Wishes & Dreams
2. A Cat For Troy; 3rd book of Wishes & Dreams
3. When Darkness Falls
In-Progress Manuscripts:
1. Michael’s Quest, 3rd book of Sons of the Desert

Submissions Status:

Currently outstanding:
- 4 queries to literary agents (we won’t talk about how man rejections have come in)
- Proposal to Carina Press (When Darkness Falls)
- 2 queries to a publisher
- 2 full manuscripts by request to a publisher
- 1 finalist in Melody of Love contest
- 4 manuscripts in The Emily contest

Synopsis, Blurb & Pitch: All finished manuscripts have these, except as noted below:

Blurb/1-paragraph summation for query letter (Needed: A CAT FOR TROY)
2-page synopsis (Needed: A CAT FOR TROY, WHEN DARKNESS FALLS)
5-10 page synopsis (Needed: A CAT FOR TROY)
1-sentence pitch for agent submissions who require this
280-character pitch for Twitter pitch events (New! Needed for ALL completed manuscripts)

THE WRITING PLAN: (not in any particular order)

WHEN DARKNESS FALLS:
1. Characterization expansion on some of the major secondary characters, particularly Damien’s Commander, Aleksei (due to the screams of “more!” from my beta readers, and his (Damien’s) demon half-sister Kayja (ditto screams) as well as Maxim, the High Magi. Plus just a little more on some of the Viziers of Sultana’s Court, to kind of punctuate their roles.
2. Go through beta reader feedback for the more extensive issues/fixes that I’d set aside until November was over.
A CAT FOR TROY:
1. Read through for plot holes
2. Run spell & grammar check in Word, and prepare to get this into the beta reader process.
3. Since this is only at 68k, it needs at least 22k more, so look for places where I can build, particularly on Katerina’s career and employees and associates, and also some of her family relationships, plus adding more of Julian & Alessandra from the first book in the series. I need more interaction between Katerina (as opposed to Cat) and Troy.
A GIFT OF JACINTH:
1. Work in more of Julian & Alessandra into the story; should make a bond between Douglas & Julian as Douglas needs someone to talk to!
2. Run spell & grammar check in Word, and prepare to get this into the beta reader process
MICHAEL’S QUEST: Brainstorm!!!
Revise Twitter pitches to 280 characters for each ready-to-go manuscript (as above)
Participate in #PitMad on Dec 7th
Set up my January author’s newsletter for working on as the month progresses.