writing

Writing Everyday Vs. Not

/ W.A. Roberts / Leave a comment

I’ve been on both sides of the spectrum. When I was posting on Wattpad I wrote thousands of words and popped out multiple chapters every day.

They weren’t edited and their no longer available, but I did that.
It also caused me burn out so bad that I took a year off. Not that I’m complaining. I watched a ton of really good shows that helped refill that well of inspiration that completely drained when I was doing all that writing though.

Doctor Who and Breaking Bad among some of those greats!
When I did pick up writing again I tried to throw myself back into it. Force myself to write every single day like I used to and found the more I tried to force myself to write the more I seemed to hit that famous brick wall. It would also frustrate me because I felt like I was failing as a writer and put me off of writing for the rest of the week.

Needless to say, it stopped me from being productive in any way shape or form. I’ve learned that whatever motivation burned through me all those years ago literally burned through me. Now I’m lucky if I can push out a good two-thousand a week. That’s if I’m writing every other day, or at least pushing through one good day of writing. Then I usually wind up avoiding any form of writing the next day. (I told you my motivation was shot.)

There’s an incentive to both ways.

If you’ve got multiple responsibilities, then yeah, sometimes it can make sense to only write a bunch of words in one day. Getting through your word count all at once allows you to focus on other things. Which is especially helpful if you’ve got a full-time job, school, kids, or all three. You know. Adult stuff that happens.

I especially got to give props to those people that can manage 10k in one workday. Like wow. Kudos to you.

But working on your MS in bits is just as great. It allows you to focus on smaller bits, work out the details and kinks at a much slower pace, and have a much more put together manuscript at the end of it. Kind of.
I say this only because its recently taking me 4 months to write a 24k novella and I know that if I had buckled down and really focused it would have taken me two. But oh well.

I did have other writing projects, so there was that going on.

All this to say, that there is no right or wrong way to write your story.
Smash it out in a month and edit later. Great!

Take six months to finish that first draft! At that pace, you’ll still beat George R.R. Martin so…Great!!!

You do you and don’t let anyone tell you that needs to be done any other way. As long as the words are getting written and you’re telling the story your way. Whatever works.

Keep writing.

Keep creating worlds

Until next time!

Enjoying the Shorter Side of Things. Or my thoughts on writing short stories.

/ W.A. Roberts / Leave a comment

So after I finished drafting my second novel, the apocalyptic space story that I’ve decided to shelve, I discovered the joys and frustration of writing a short story.

It all came about when I found a open call for a few anthologies and thought…”hmm, I’m waiting on query responses anyways…” and I haven’t quite pulled myself out of the rabbit hole.

Especially when I found a nice little publisher called Black Hare Press and decided that I love ninety percent of their calls for anthologies.

Yeah, definitely got bit by some kind of bug.

Some of the best things I love about writing short stories is….

  1. It’s a much shorter distance from Point A to B. Literally, hook, line, sinker.

  2. No side quests to focus on. You are literally just solving the main plot.

  3. Less characters to keep up with. There’s no reason to add in that bit about Joe the clerk because the story will be over in five hundred words anyways

  4. You learn to tighten up your prose. All those extra, gorgeous words that you typically like to add to your stories easily gets replaced for shorter sentences.

But like everything else that you find in this world. Writing short stories doesn’t come without their draw backs.

For instance.

    1. No back story. Or at least not near enough space for a back story. Typically you have a word count that you have to hit, anything else you start reaching for novel status.

    2. Limited number of characters. This is one of those pros and cons things because of the word count you don’t have much room for multiple character descriptions.

    3. You run the chance of creating another novel. Sometimes a story idea latches on to you and just can’t stop writing. No matter what length you were originally going for.

    4. You run the risk of not connecting with your story. Because you are literally whipping through it, sometimes there’s that feeling of disconnect. This is typically when it might be a good idea to decide rather or not it’s worth even publishing or to go back to the drawing board.

Those are my pros and cons list. I hope this helps you decide rather or not you want to attempt short stories if you haven’t already. If you have what are some things that you liked or disliked about it. Let me know in the comments below and until next time.

Authors That Inspire (Chuck Wendig)

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Authors That Inspire
(Chuck Wendig)

So, there’s so many authors out there. You find them on Twitter, YouTube, Tumbler. Etc. Etc. Literally, everywhere and most of them are just posting about their daily lives, what’s coming next in their career, and that absolutely adorable pet picture they captured while being distracted. (Not dissing pictures of pets. I know I post enough of them.)

But there’s so many of them out there that I thought I would start a new series spotlighting the authors that have inspired me through the past few years. There’s so many of them from mainstream to those that deserve far more attention than they’ve received.

So here, we are.

Now I’m not going to go into the big names like Stephen King and J. K. Rowling.

We all know why we love them.

Nah, I’m thinking more of the everyday writers. The ones that have to jump onto social media daily and advertise their books months before it’s even finished in order to get any kind of sales.

Not that the main stream writers don’t work their asses off. There’s a reason their at the top, but we’re not focusing on them.

And I figure why not start this series off with the writer that made me realize I had to think about this writing thing as a 9-5 instead of some kind of distant dream.

Chuck Wendig.

Chuck is an NYT best-selling author of Starwars: Aftermath series. He has also written the Miriam Black Series and most recently Wanderers. A fantastic dystopian that I’ve heard has gotten great reviews.

But those are what makes him a great author, what makes him an inspiration is he runs the blog terribleminds.com where he posts such things like “5 things I learned…” which are guest blogs from authors and their current releases and if you dig far enough into his archives, you will find his “25 Things…” blog posts he used to post consistently. Or you can just look up his Kick Ass Writer book that has a fair amount of them from writing that first draft to tackling the marketing and social aspect of this whole writing thing.

He still gives a fair amount of advice for new writers, his book Damn Fine Story is supposed to be filled with little nuggets to write the best book you can. Haven’t read it yet myself but it’s there.

Through his blog and books, I learned of the writing community on Twitter and stumbled across the authortube community. Hence why he was the first person I thought of when thinking up this blog posts.

I wish to do more posts on Authors that inspire and steer further from the mainstream people so if you know of anyone out there that you feel is inspiring other authors feel free to let me know in the comments below or over on twitter and I will look them up add them to my lists.

Until next time.

What Goals?

/ W.A. Roberts / Leave a comment

So, it’s a occurred to me that it’s the first full week into 2020 and I’ve yet to actually write down any goals for this new year. Which is odd for me because every year I’ve always written down my goals and have some kind of plan going forward.

This year, I know what I want to do but I’m seem to be freestyling it. And with everything that I want to do this year I know that’s not going to happen. I need to focus and to do that I don’t need some vague idea of how these things are going to happen. I need plans, charts, whole lists of thing that need to happen before other things can happen.

Example. Last year, I put “Get Stop The Raven published.”

Okay.

Fine.

That’s a long term goal that will happen one day. But what about the steps in between? Finding an agent or publisher. Marketing it, even before all of it comes out. Little stepping stones that I completely over looked last year and left me feeling deflated when my main goal didn’t happen. So now I’m taking a few steps back to make sure I’m going through the motions and not just focusing on the end goal.

The end goal is to get Stop The Raven published. The current goals is to continue to query agents/ possibly small publishing house. (I’ll get into all of that later) And focus on continuing to grow my media spaces. Like this blog.

For this year I’m gonna try really hard not to ignore this space. I’ve already gotten a series idea that I could also incorporate into my youtube channel. If I ever get brave enough to film those videos and just put them out there.

At some point, I’m going to just say fuck it and do it anyways. Come what may, at least they’ll be out there. It’s not easy when anxiety and that impostor syndrome starts creeping in. But oh well.

It’s a mute point.

The point is, to grow this blog I have some new ideas. Like a new series that I’m working on called “Authors That Inspire.” I already have the first post written, I may or may not film it, and then I’ll post it sometime in the coming weeks and hopefully continue on with this band wagon.

Other ideas, are of course to keep everyone update on what is actually going on in my writing career. I will make another post on what anthologies I’ve got stories in in the future so that you know what to keep an eye for and what other anthologies I may or may not be working on.

And other random tid-bit blog posts ideas that come at me. (I’ve already gotten another idea while writing this one.)

Another goal of mine is to get into more anthologies. I’ve found that I enjoy writing short stories as much as I do whole novels and I especially find it so much easier when there’s a theme involved. So getting into more anthologies is a definite must for me.

I’ve seen people make some crazy goals of like 100 or 200 stories in different anthologies in a given year…and while it’s possible (Stares at fellow authors in a certain anthology group) I know me. I know my limits and I know at some point in the middle of this year I’m going feel the burn out and I’m going to work my ass off in making sure that doesn’t happen.

So I’m going to say like 10 stories in various anthologies for this year. Not sure if I should count the short stories yet to be published in the upcoming months as part of that goal seeing as I wrote them last year, but we’ll aim for 10 unwritten stories in different anthologies. That’s realistic. ( I think)

There’s also a novella that I’ve been working on for the last half of 2019 that I finally made the first round of edits to. Think IT X Stranger Things. I don’t know. I just threw that out there because its basically like all those 80’s films where the kids are going up against the scary monster. I may have been inspired by those two films at the time and I quite enjoyed working on this particular story.


So, I’m looking to publish that one as well. Probably self published unless I get lucky some where else, Crossing my fingers here it’s going to be good when it does come out.

So yeah. Writing wise those are my goals. That’s what I wish to succeed this year. Personal goals wise.

My husband and I are looking to buy a house. That’s moving forward quite nicely as of right now.


I do wish to lose another 20lbs this year. Last year I managed to lose 15 and though I didn’t brag about it much on social media, I was stoked that I was able to accomplish even that. So this year, I’m raising that bar and going to work twice as hard.

Also wish to have more family time. Something else that we’re already incorporating into our weekly schedules. Watching more movies with kids. Enjoying more television series with the husband and playing some board games as a family.

Small things. Thing that will mean something in the years to come. So those are my goals.

Part of the reason why I couldn’t think of anything was because I was already working on these things in 2019. Their not anything new but I guess their still things I hope to accomplish for the rest of the year.

I hope everyone is having a happy new year so far and remember you won’t accomplish anything this year if you don’t show up and do the work.

Til next time!

2019 in a nutshell

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2019 in a nutshell

2019 was an interesting year. I can honestly say nothing really exciting happened and something exciting did happen. Let me break that down a bit for you because I know I’ve lost a few people there.

Personal life wise, nothing exciting happened. I wrote my stories, posted videos and worked on the weekends. Held on to a few goals that I’ve been talking about achieving for the past couple of years.

Example….I kept promising myself I would workout and lose some weight. While my aim was 30lbs this year, I still managed to lose 15lbs and kept most of that weight off despite falling off the workout wagon.

I also managed to purchase my website this year. A goal that I’ve been putting off for a couple of years now. It feels weird not having .wordpress.com at the end of my domain name but something I can for sure get used to having.

I also managed to spend most of my year writing. In 2019 I wrote 1 novel, 1 novella, 6 short stories and several different drabbles for various genres.

And the biggest thing to happen for me this year is I did manage to get published.

Was it the Stop The Raven novel that I wanted to see in print everywhere? No, but I have five drabbles published in various books from the Dark Drabbles Series from Black Hare Press and I have three of those six  short stories set to be published in 2020 along with several more drabbles. I also published two more short stories on site under the “shorts” link. Feel free to check them out.

That 6th short story is somewhere up in limbo waiting for the Dark Lords of submissions to say yay or nay. Crossing my fingers here

Yes, 2020 is looking to be another great year for publishing small works. Maybe even that novella I mentioned, and dare I say it, Stop The Raven. It’s looking to be a bright year and it’s all because of the stepping stones that were placed in 2019 and the years before.

Like I said, not a wholly exciting year as far what adventures I had, but definitely great enough for the writing career that I’ve been trying to build up for the past three years!

Especially since I discovered Black Hare Press at the beginning of this year and have since met some amazing people that I look forward to continue working with in the New Year!

Here’s to a great 2020 and all it’ll bring about!

The Perfect Writing Day

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One thing we all think about when we first start writing is that perfect schedule. How we would run our days if we were to become full time writers. So here’s a run down list of what my ideal schedule could be. (Or would be if I buckled down and actually stuck to this kind of schedule.)

Think of this as an experiment to see how well this would work out.

6:30 AM – Wake up, get kids ready for school.

7 AM – Spend 15 minutes on social media before taking the kids to school.

8 AM – The dog’s gone for a walk, which allows me a stretch, and my coffee is poured. This means WRITING TIME!!!! Well, time to work on my blog anyways. With any luck this won’t take the whole hour, but who knows. (This blog post is currently taking almost two hours. Have I mentioned I’m the procrastination queen?

9:30 AM – Hubby goes to work and when I return home it’s work out time.

10 30 AM – More writing! This time I work on either a short story or edits or another project that I’ve got going at the moment. (So many projects, so little time.)

12 PM – Lunch and probably some time to chill and watch a couple of videos on youtube. (Also the dog is probably bugging me to go outside again.)

2:45 PM – Time has gotten away with me and it’s now time to pick up the kids….

…

I kid.

…

Seriously, let’s jet back to fantasy land here for a moment.

12:15 PM – More writing! I’m really hoping with all this writing I can get a good chunk of this short story that I need to write before November finished.

1:15/1:45 PM – At this point I need to stretch and so that means some quick pick up around the house before it’s time to get the kids. Also dog.

2:45 PM – Seriously time to pick up the kids! That means sitting in the car line for 30 minutes and read. My current read is The Shining by Stephen King. This is my second attempt to read this book, I was reading it a couple of months ago and got interested in another story and this got put on the side burner, but I’m back at it and still enjoying it.

3:30 PM – From here my day descends into chaos. Kids are wanting snacks, homework needs to be finished. (Bursts into rendition of NeverEnding Story.)

4:30 PM – Kids are settled, homework is done, and they’re probably already playing their video games. If nothing happens I could write for another 30 to 45 minutes.

5 PM – Cook dinner, eat, clean up.

6:30 – Time to pick up husband, come home. Baths…Dog needs to go out for the 4th or 5th time this day and it’s probably going to be a longer walk to calm him down for the night along with the kids.

7:30/8 PM – More writing? Possibly. At this point it would make sense since everyone is quieted down for the time being.

10 PM – Bedtime / Some mindless TV or reading. Depends. My husband is wanting me to watch an anime called Hunter X Hunger, so probably a couple of episodes of that before bedtime.

So there it is. My perfect writing. Was it all spent writing? No, probably because I find that if I spend exhaustive long moments in front of the computer I get angsty and need to get up and move. Include the kids in that mix with all their needs and after school activities and if I don’t dedicate the morning hours to writing and partial of the evenings I don’t get a lot of writing done. Also, I’m good at procrastinating, as I’ve mentioned, so to achieve this I would have to turn off social media so…

I’m going to attempt this kind of a schedule in a vlog on my youtube channel. If you want to see the results of that, head on over there. Should be going up about the same time as this. And let me know what you think?


What is your ideal writing schedule? Obviously, if I didn’t have kids I would definitely devote whole days to my characters, but alas, I enjoy being a mom and wouldn’t change this schedule for anything.

Also in case you didn’t know. I have another drabble coming out in Black Hare Press Beyond Anthology next week. Sept. 17th. You can pre-order it here . There’s a 100+ stories from various different author’s from all over the  globe. So buy it. Enjoy it. Review it. All that good stuff.

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Until next time!

Favorite Editing Tools

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There’s a long lists of how to edit your story. What steps need to be taken to get from point A to B and I can focus on those things in a later blog. Lord knows I’ve been through those trenches enough to know a thing or two about surviving. I believe there’s a whole blog about finding what works for you that includes a list of things that happened to help through that particular process.

And there’s plenty of other blogs out there that spell out some of the best methods of writing, hell there’s whole books. I’ll get to those in this blog as well if you’re looking for some ideas on what to read.

But there’s few on the tools that a person can use to edit their novel and I’ve had to do some deep diving myself to really find what works for me. So here’s a few tools that I’ve found that makes my editing process so much easier and takes off some of that stress.

  1. Notebooks:   No, this first one isn’t anything online and if you’re a writer it’s not a huge secret to you. Having a spare notebook next to you as you go through your first draft just to jot down some quick notes is a literal life saver. Especially when you’re doing most of this on the go and don’t have quick access to a computer. You can even do this while you are writing your first draft and just make notes of changes that you think of as your story progresses. Because we all know that story is going to change mid structure. So scribble all of your notes down during the original drafting process and again when you are doing the first read through and when you are finished make those changes you feel are still relevant.

  2. Grammarly:  Grammarly and other such editing sites is one of those easily over looked tools that people tend to ignore because it is a computerized editor reading data in your work and giving you feed back, but for a person who sucks at grammar, like me, its a life saver in getting those simple mistakes out of your manuscript before sending it off to beta readers and CP’s who’ll catch a misplaced comma a mile away.

  3. Text to Voice sites:  This is a relatively new step for me. Before I would have suffered and read the words aloud and gone hoarse in the process. Now I’ve found a way to have the story read to me. Which makes it so much better because I can listen and take notes or make changes without having to lose the rhythm of the story. Admittedly, it gets paused on several occasions while I’m going through it and I do wind up rewinding to listen to the same sentence twenty times but it’s not my voice that’s being worn out and it really came in handy in my last short story edit.

  4. Scrivener:   Okay, yes I know scrivener is an all around tool but make no mistake it really shows it’s usefulness while you are editing. You can pull up split screen so that you are staring at your original first draft and all its notes and be able to type out all the edits on the other screen. You can switch out scene cards if you decide the scenes need to be mixed up. You can jump back and forth between chapters and storyboard mode. All of your additional research notes, characters cards, and world building information is right there in the story binder so you’re not flipping through a hundred other folders on your computer, fretting that you’ve accidentally deleted it in the last folder clean out.

  5.   Thesaurus.com :   Or any other book or site that allows you to have a list of words that mean the same as that word that you’ve used over a hundred times. You know what I’m talking about. Going through the first draft most of us have gotten into the habit of fast drafting thanks to challenges like Nanowrimo and so we’ve got a hundred instances of “look” and “rushed” through out our entire novel and a good thesaurus always helps in finding another word before we go through and just completely rewrite the entire paragraph.

So, yes. There is my 5 favorite editing items that I use before I send my manuscripts out to beta readers and cps. Cause let’s be honest. Even when we tell them that it’s a second or third draft we still want the best we can do on our own sent to them before their eyes land on it and every little bit helps in the end.

Until next time. Happy writing!

The Process of Querying: Tools I’ve Used and How It’s Going.

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Querying can be tough. Writing a short, maybe three paragraph, explanation of your 500 page book sounds like an impossible tasks. How are you supposed to get all the super cool characters and plot points that made the book worth writing squeezed into three paragraphs?

The problem is, you don’t. You take your main character, maybe one extra side character (Love interest if you have one), your antagonists, and go over the biggest hurdle in your book. That’s it. It’s that easy and that hard.

At least it’s not the elevator pitch. (Don’t get me started on that monster)

Everyone says writing the book is the easiest part. I beg to differ. When I first started looking over the querying process I realized I would need to start writing my query before I even finished my book. So, I worked on it in pieces. I wrote a first draft, because yes this is going to be done in drafts as well, and then I rewrote it.

I wrote down all the notes and possible suggestions for how to make a great query. Hint: look up Jane Friedman’s The complete guide to Query Letters and Query Shark. Both are literary agents that offer some sound advice when it comes to writing queries and sometimes do query critiques in their blogs.

Also feel free to sign up for Query Tracker. It’s a great resource for when you’re in the query trenches and need a way to keep up with your queries, it’s a year subscription that costs $25. Not to shabby for all it provides. Also there’s a great forum that you can join that allows you to post your query for review and fellow writers will give you advice to make it better.

You will have to actually look over other queries and maybe give some opinions of your own to get advice on yours, but it’s still a great community, and plenty of other topics you can look over. Everything from querying etiquette to tips on author platform can be found inside those forums.

Definitely worth a look at if you’re feeling a little loss on the whole process and just want some advice from fellow writers.

My own querying process is feeling a bit stale.

Think

tenor

and

giphy (1)

I’ve done the write, rewrite, have people read it, pay an editor to look over your query and write it again and……giphy

I’m trying a thing….I’m thinking it’s the first chapter so I’m going to try and rewrite it so that the second chapter (?) is the first chapter and see how well this works out. This also means I’ll be looking for people to beta read and tell me if it is actually my original first chapter and if the second chapter works better as my first chapter.

 Though, I’m hesitant because I have so many balls up in the air right now, that going in and rewriting my first chapter and what not in this MS seems a little insane but if there’s no interest it just makes sense to try something different.

Do I really know what I’m doing? No

Does any of us? No.

Why? Because the market is so subjective that what works for one person may not work for another. There’s no concrete formula that will get you that perfect agent and grand publishing deal, so we’re all just rowing down this creek with only one paddle and hoping for the map you were given isn’t completely useless.

For those concerned about rewriting this while I have queries out. Their just queries. Not whole or partial requests that agents are looking over. And if someone does show interest in what I have now I will send them the MS as is without the changes…maybe mention that I was considering the changes but I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.

So, I’ve gone on long enough about how querying is working out for me. Let me know if you’re going through the same process. How is it working out for you? Has it worked out for you? I want to hear all about your victories, even the smaller ones like you’ve finally gotten it written. Because any small step is still a step closer to your own success!

Until next time!

Giving up isn’t the easy way out (also this isn’t me giving up…)

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When you’ve put so much time and effort into something and you hit a wall, you can either push through, remind yourself that you can do anything that you put your mind to, and more often than not you do wind up pushing through to the end.

But what happens if you can’t push through?

What happens if you just don’t got the energy or the motivation to keep going?

You’ve put your time, effort, and sometimes your soul into a project only to not see it finished or pushed out into the world and all you want to do is give up. Tuck it away and tell the world, “I tried.”

Most would look at this as a failure. You’ll probably think of it as one long regret some where down the road and wonder what would have happened if you just kept on trying.

That’s the reason giving up isn’t the easy way out. We beat ourselves up about it. We tell ourselves that we can’t live with those failures or they’ll eat us alive later on down the road. And we’re partially right.

It’s why so many of us can’t admit defeat even when it’s staring at us right in the face. We’d rather go back and pick at a problem until its bones are nothing but splinters and dust lying in the ground.

( My own current situation, hence why I’m not giving up.)

Sometimes giving up is the only answer and we just have to take a few days to let that sink in. To hope that this failure is setting us up for our next big success and so we mourn the loss of a dream for a bit and then go back to the drawing board and try something else.

Eased by the fact that we all have our failures tucked away in a drawer somewhere that we either forget about or come back to look over fondly for sometime. Either way, it’s not an easy decision to make.

It’s not something that we just wake up and decide we’re throwing all of our hard work away for nothing. Sometimes it’s telling people that you’ll get back to it some day and then some day never arrives because it’s the little white lie that we told ourselves to make us feel better about giving up.

But (and I’ll repeat this as often as I can) giving up is not the easy way out!

Because if you feel like giving up. If you’re going to lose your sanity over the rejections and criticisms and all the mess that comes with putting yourself and your work out there, know that it’s okay. That not all of us think your looking for an easy out.

We know that it’s long nights tossing and turning in bed, wondering if you’re doing the right thing. The little lie that you may return some day to finish this work. Its endless days of what if’s and maybe’s and no one can really fault you for wanting to give up and focus on what’s best for yourself and your family when all you want to do is work on your dream, but your dream is costing more than you thought, or causing more damage than good. We get it. We’re standing right there with you sometimes and it’s okay to just let it go.

Because we know it’s not an easy decision to make.

You ever given up on something that you really wanted to make happen? That you worked hard on and it just wasn’t happening? Was it an easy decision or did you fight tooth and nail before coming to that conclusion?

UPDATES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS!!!

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I know it’s been a hot minute since I last posted on here. My apologizes in advance. I focused a bit on my youtube channel, which I ask that you check out for more content. I’ve also been focusing on writing and querying and that seems to take up a good bit of my time. 

So, without further ado I’ll get into the announcements.

First off, I’ve got a small piece recently published in the ANGELS: A Divine Microficition Anthology by Black Hare Press

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It’s currently available on Amazon and you’re welcome to check it out to find my piece as well as over 100+ other author’s. It’s already topped as a #1 Best Seller in it’s category and isn’t looking to disappear anytime soon.

That being said, I also have another bit of drabble coming out soon in their Beyond Dark Drabbles #4 and is up for Kindle preorder and is due to be released in September.

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So keep an eye out for further updates on that.

Now on to other news.

I’m still querying STOP THE RAVEN the stats for that are as followed.

22 Queries sent out

17 Rejected.

0- MS Requests….

I’m really beginning to think that I need to take a look at my first chapter and maybe the query and synopsis but I’ll wait a bit longer to see what happens. Maybe I’m being overly optimistic here and a tad stubborn but I’ve seen worse odds. So….To each his own, right?

Though I have already started plotting out how I can make the first chapter far more interesting and possibly even change the plot all together but that whole bag of worms will wait until I’ve reached a few more rejections.

On the writing front I am currently working on another story. Think IT where a bunch of kids are fighting a monster lurking in the woods. I’m enjoying it. For the most part. It’s giving me some trouble as far as not wanting flow as easily as I hoped it would but it’s only in first draft mode and not looking to meet public eyes anytime soon.

Maybe if I put myself on some kind of deadline I can get this thing finished and edited and figure out how I wanna publish this thing. That will be a problem for another day though.

I’ve also have several short story ideas building up for submissions to anthologies. If you write speculative fiction and are looking for a place to submit your work feel free to check out Black Hare Press. They have more drabbles looking for submissions as well as their new Seven Deadly Sins series that just opened for submissions as well as several others.

If you’re a reader, still check out their content because they have some amazing anthologies coming out.

My current reading lists includes:

Angels – because I do wanna read some of those other stories. I got glimpses of titles and they all look so amazing. Can’t wait to dive into that.

and

Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab – I’ve followed her on twitter and love her enthusiasim for writing and traveling and have been meaning to get into one of her books. I’m not even disappointed by the story thus far and am looking forward to finishing this series off.

Otherwise summer has been filled with kids, camping, and an upcoming water park trip. Woohoo! Yeah, it’s been going by pretty fast and the end of the year is just around the corner.

So what things have you been up to? Achieved any major goals? Read any good books this summer?

Let me know in the comments, I’d love to hear from you guys.