Category Archives: Uncategorized

a in love young couple on haystacks in cowboy hats

I hadn’t really been focusing much on relationships in my books before I started writing the Martiniere books. Oh, they were there, but there was no particularly vivid romance, no toe-curling, passionate, to die for relationships. The closest might have been the relationship between Bess and Alex in the Netwalk Sequence books. But even then, they grew up together, and were just there for each other. Sarah–well, her relationships ended badly. Diana and Will have kept most of their relationship private. Melanie and Marty drifted together at work.

Then I started writing what became Inheritance. Right off the bat, Gabe Ramirez started yelling at me that I had things all wrong, and it didn’t happen the way I wanted to write it. Originally, he was going to be a thoroughgoing cad. A womanizer, a gambler, a bad guy that Ruby was well rid of when she divorced him. One of the forces that Ruby had to struggle against to keep the Double R Ranch.

Not what Gabe became after he kept yelling at me–an aristocratic heir on the run because he dared speak out in court against the abuses within his family’s privately held company. Who had a history of trauma to match Ruby’s. Who would keep silent about his real identity for fear of the consequences for Ruby should she know and he be discovered, until he was silenced by the use of mind control techniques that made him look like the worst of philanderers. Who carried a torch for Ruby even after he remarried, and once widowed, longed to be back in Ruby’s life. Who was willing to face certain death in order to protect Ruby and their son.

But Ruby’s side was just as intense. She never got together with anyone else after her divorce. She still held deep feelings for Gabe, leading to long-simmering anger when he remarried several years after their divorce. Once she learned who Gabe really was, she had to learn to trust him all over again because Gabe’s betrayal, even though caused by drugs and mind control manipulation, injured her so deeply. Then she also wanted to prove herself worthy of her aristocratic beloved.

I hadn’t really delved that deeply into a relationship until Ruby and Gabe. They met at a rodeo–Gabe on the run, hiding as an itinerant ranch hand and saddle bronc rider, Ruby as a barrel racer and rodeo court princess. Ruby catches Gabe’s eye with her horsemanship as she rides her barrel horse through a huge bucking fit during a competition, while being verbally harassed by a drunken bronc rider with whom she has a history. He follows her out of the arena because he wants to see what happens next with the woman and the horse, and because he’s itching to confront that drunken yayhoo. For his part, once he starts talking to Ruby, he realizes that she is not just a beautiful, highly-skilled horsewoman but is brilliant in their shared field, ag robotics. Ruby is taken by this handsome bronc rider who is polite, mannerly, accepted as friendly by her quixotic mare, and knows his way around ag robotics. Plus, once she finds out he’s on the run (he tells her he’s evading indenture bounty hunters wanting to force him into servitude because of the debt he owes for his education), there’s an aura of the forbidden around him. She doesn’t know how long she’ll have with this darkly handsome, brilliant, polite man who’s also good with horses.

And with that element…boy, did the story ever take off.

I have written a different way that the two of them got together, in a world (the A Different Life books) where Gabe’s younger life, while still traumatic, had different trauma factors than in the original Martiniere Legacy stories. In this case, they meet when Gabe interviews Ruby for a big financial grant, the Martiniere Grant, to help develop her vision of biobots in a world with rapid climate change. He’s coming off of a bad breakup where he was somewhat of a trophy for his ex-girlfriend, who didn’t like how hard he was working toward his goal of a leadership position within the family-held company. And his ex didn’t like horses. Ruby’s brilliance and her horsemanship attracts Gabe. He bails her family out of a major financial crisis in part to spite a business competitor with whom he has a significant bad history. But the attraction between them happens quickly.

Beyond Ruby and Gabe, however, there’s the relationship between Gabe’s sister Justine and her beloved, Donald Atwood (chronicled in Justine Fixes Everything: Reflections on Mortality). Originally, Justine and Donald marry to allow Justine to escape from the control of her abusive father. It’s a very transactional relationship at the beginning, but Justine and Donald build it into true love. However, political circumstances force their divorce. Donald is in poor health, and the two of them have committed to significant underground political action supporting reproductive rights, as well as battling her father. On the surface, they’re estranged–but in reality, they protect each other.

And then there’s a third relationship in the Martiniere books, as told in the second book of the A Different Life series, the just-released A Different Life: Now. Always. Forever. The story picks up several months after the conclusion of the first A Different Life book, featuring Ruby’s friend, Linda Coates, who has a significant history of her own. After Ruby hires Linda as her executive assistant, Linda meets Gabe’s executive assistant and cousin, Armand Martiniere. Over the course of their first weeks working together, they fall in love. But, of course, being a Martiniere story, there’s a lot of outside political nastiness that complicates everything.

It’s been an interesting romantic ride with these relationships. At the moment I’m not writing anything particularly romantic (well, except for a different Martiniere variant now serializing on my Martiniere Stories Substack, where Gabe reveals himself after they’ve been together for four years). The current work in progress, Federation Cowboy, has the protagonists participate in a formal marital association contract in order to simplify their work, but there’s not a romance–maybe. Still in the first third of the book, and the characters may yet surprise me.

For whatever reason, however, the Martinieres seem to be romantics in their relationships, even when there’s a pragmatic reason behind them happening. Especially with Gabe and Ruby.

At this point, I’m really glad that Gabriel Martiniere stood up and started yelling at me, because it’s nice to be able to write an epic relationship like the one he and Ruby have. It’s been a good ride.

Well, the computer pictured is no longer part of my life. It’s in the process of being recycled. Ah well, it had a decent run and helped me produce many books.

This week has been a bit discombobulated as far as writing was concerned. We had to make a quick run to Portland for medical stuff–one appointment got cancelled, but it was the less important one, so that’s good. The other–a routine bone scan to check on the state of my 65-year-old bones–went off smoothly, and odds are pretty darn good from the one glimpse I got that I’ll get a verdict of solid bones. However, a Portland trip pretty much means at least two days lost to getting much done on the writing front. I did manage to deal with some interview stuff, etc etc, but otherwise?

Fortunately, I had somewhat accounted for this. Originally, my plan was to spend Portland time drafting my promotion plan for 2023. Well, that didn’t happen. All the same, I had some thoughts about Federation Cowboy on the way down and where I’ll take it–not as far as my original plan went way back when during my first planning for it, but still, given everything that is now popping up in this story, quite appropriate. Plus I got some work done on a worldbuilding short story that might get submitted to the NIWA anthology–or not, depending on what I think of it when I get the darn thing finished.

This is one of those weeks where looking back at my to-do list and looking at what did get done was a big ego boost. Federation Cowboy episodes are now loaded on Kindle Vella through March 22nd. That’s a bit of relief. I started on that Harbinger story for NIWA–or not, if not, it’s still a good worldbuilding story. I filled out a number of interview questionnaires, which was great!

And one of the huge, HUGE things–I sat down and created two spreadsheets. One tracks events that I will be connected with and might want to do promotion for. All events–from NIWA book table sales and podcasts to currently scheduled promotions through Draft2Digital, to convention appearances. The other tracks interviews and reviews that are scheduled WITH LINKS.

I can’t believe I haven’t done this before. For one thing, this means I can look back and request more appearances after a year or two has gone by. I just–how could I have overlooked this?

The other thing is that I started work on a promotion plan that is a completely different approach from what I’ve done before. Instead of focusing on a campaign for each individual book and series, I’m taking a broader view and asking “what needs to be done for backlist series? For new releases? For events? For promo discounts? For interviews?”

Another aspect that I can’t believe I haven’t thought about before now.

Oh, I still have a lot to do. The coming week has worldbuilding, that short story, hopefully some more chapter work for both Federation Cowboy and The Cost of Power. I also need to do production work to bring Life in the Shadows out in paperback, and the wide/paperback version of Beating the Apocalypse. Those need to have some promotion of their own happening, too.

But maybe, just maybe, I’m getting a handle on things?

Happy book birthday, A Different Life: Now. Always. Forever.

NAF started as a kind of lark. I got the idea about one of Ruby Barkley’s friends just out of the blue, once I had finished the first A Different Life book. Originally, it was going to be just a wee bit of fluff. Something to lighten up my mood and put up on Kindle Vella, and continue Ruby and Gabe’s story, from the perspective of Linda Coates, Ruby’s best friend in college. And–also about Linda finding the love of her life.

Um. Well. It ended up having quite a bit of commentary about right-wing politics, while still having a romance at the core of it. All the same, it does have a happy-ever-after ending, even though everybody goes through a LOT during the course of the story. And I enjoyed writing about one of Gabe’s lesser-known cousins, his executive assistant Armand Martiniere, one of the Canadian Martinieres. Like most of the Martinieres, Armand is quite polite, mannerly, and charming…except when those he cares about are threatened.

Linda has quite a bit of her own baggage, tied to the death of her grandmother Jenni Coates, an Oregon State Representative. Jenni Coates’s death had a huge impact on everyone in the Coates family, especially since it also drew them into corporate warfare at the lower level. When Ruby offers Linda the job as her executive assistant, Linda sees it as her way out of a no-win scenario involving her creepy brother-in-law Clyde. She didn’t expect to fall in love, much less with a Martiniere….

Available at the usual suspects.

Amazon.

Apple

Barnes and Noble

Kobo

Smashwords

Well, this was the week when the wheels somewhat came off of the bus in several ways.

First of all, my fairly new iMac started not working well with Firefox and Safari. After poking around, I realized I needed to bite the bullet and upgrade my OS–which meant going through two OS uploads. That ate up a large chunk of two days, especially since other tech started misbehaving. I needed to reinstall Scrivener and spent nearly an hour on the phone with the library because my Libby app wouldn’t let me check anything out.

Everything’s fixed now, but oh was that ever a tech slog. Add in a couple of nights dealing with aches that kept me awake, so no good sleep, and…yeah. Not that much accomplished this week.

I did get rejects from all three of the latest Zombies Need Brains open calls. I know it’s a pretty competitive market, but all the same…deep sigh. I sent out five short stories yesterday, and already got two rejects back. That’s the way the short story business runs, for sure.

But I did pull everything together, except promotion, for A Different Life: Now. Always. Forever. I was planning to do much more promotion this week, but besides the computer hassle, I kept running into other, private issues that just snarled things up from Wednesday through Friday. Fortunately, Friday seems to have signaled a turnaround, which is good. And I also got episodes loaded for Federation Cowboy through March 8th, and am working on another chapter that will give me episodes through mid-March at the very least. I’d like to have episodes locked down through the end of March, but I also want to get some other writing work done besides Cowboy, so we shall see.

Our first B-Cubed Sunday Brunch session with Susan Kay Quinn and N.R.M. Roshak, about solarpunk and hopepunk, went off well. Whew. I’m always a little anxious about organizing these things when I have to coordinate them, but everything worked quite well and we had a great time. You can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFl221mFRhE

And Tuesday is when A Different Life: Now. Always. Forever. becomes available on Amazon, Apple, Barnes and Noble, Ingram, Kobo, and Smashwords. Preorders are available as well.

Next week will be a wee bit of a challenge because I’m traveling. But that’s just one more thing I need to figure out in this process.

Planning promotion; picture by author

Post number four. I’ve managed to keep this process going for four weeks. Yay me.

Today was slightly different, because I decided that my focus needed to be “what have I accomplished during the month” rather than just the past week in review. So I went ahead and started working on thinking about what did and didn’t work, including what roadblocks I encountered and how I could possibly overcome them.

Three pages later…wow. But there are definitely some things that need to be developed further. First of all, in order to get some of the things done that I need to get done, requires the ability to spread out with paperwork that doesn’t need to be picked up but doesn’t get in the way of accessing things like books and supplies. Somewhat of a tall order due to the current office setup. So I am looking at that and will spend time organizing it.

I need to develop a coherent promotion plan rather than just willy-nilly saying “oh here’s my latest stuff” as an afterthought.

I need to reduce stress by having my volunteer activities better coordinated and blocked out in my schedule.

I need to reclaim my sewing space, identify what projects I plan to work on, and begin creating craft items for fall online sales.

As I go about moving my backlist onto Ingram for paperback versions, I need to move those items through production, including updated interiors, continuity tweaks, and full wrap covers.

The writing has actually been making progress, though slower than I would like. But some of that is due to Caroline Starshine asserting herself more and more, almost as much as Gabriel Martiniere started to do with the Martiniere stories. I don’t think Caroline’s story is going to last more than one book, but hoo boy is it ever turning into a roller-coaster ride. It’s a much better story than the original concept I was playing with over ten years ago. However, as well as that serial is progressing, I need to get ahead of uploading so that I can turn from it to other projects. On the other hand, I seem to be doing a decent job of juggling multiple work items, so….

In a lot of ways it will get easier as we get out of winter. Right now, I need to deal with the horse about midday, which turns out to be somewhat of an organizational challenge. Weird but true. It’s a lot easier for me to work straight through until four or five, take a break to do horse stuff, then get back to it. I suppose it’s a function of darkness and so on. I just find the midday horse break to be somewhat more distracting and it shouldn’t be. It’s a matter of my head space.

What is becoming more clear is that I need to spend some time breaking down tasks that seem big and insurmountable at the moment into workable pieces. I started doing that about this time last year, and then the cataract blew that all to pieces, along with the MacBookPro teetering on the edge of collapse. Which is another factor–I need to begin integrating the MacBookAir into my writing again. The short period where I was using the iPad for everything away from the computer ended up causing as many problems as it solved, in the long run. So I need to be doing that.

The overall lesson from January? Planning and structures work, as long as I adequately break the tasks down into smaller, doable units. And, y’know, actually do the work of planning.

Well, I think I know what February is going to be all about.

Oh my.

When I started writing these Kindle Vella projects, my main idea was to get some of these damn stories out into the world. For the most part, except for the Martiniere books, that’s been the case. I have pulled things off of my hard drive, put a little organization into them, and tossed them up on Vella, then at least up on Amazon if not wide.

And it’s been a learning proposition. I’ve definitely changed up my drafting processes to use Scrivener even more than I was starting to do (the non-serialized Martiniere books were driving me in that direction just so I could keep track of continuity). I suspect that’s been a minor factor in this huge change I’ve noticed.

What I didn’t expect was for the serialization-to-novel process to affect how I plotted a story and, ultimately, my productivity processes. After doing this off and on for over a year (well, not so off-and-on considering I have been doing the same thing over on Substack, only with a slower schedule), I have started to realize that serialization has helped me figure out how to plot better without needing to be so formal about it.

Why? I’m not entirely sure. I do work off of an outline, but these days said outline is primarily a set of fairly loose chapter summaries running about 3-5 chapters ahead of where I am in drafting. And the outline is pretty flexible. It lives in its own file under the research tab in Scrivener, where I have it open most of the time while drafting the current chapter in Word. If anything, as I said above, drafting serials seems to have helped me use Scriv more effectively. Some of this is just a matter of visual organization. I can look over at Scrivener and see the chapter titles. Check the word count of the draft. Look up something without needing to scroll back in Word. Keep track of the chapter length because each chapter has its own document, until it’s finished and put into Scrivener.

But what is happening as a result of serialization isn’t just a matter of how I’m outlining and drafting. Serialization provides me with set deadlines. For Kindle Vella, that means an active project must have enough drafted so I can stay at least two weeks ahead of my publication schedule (my active Vellas post new episodes every Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday). Episodes generally run from 600-2000 words.

For Substack, I try to have enough drafted to post a new 800-2000 word episode every Friday. I prefer to run a month ahead of schedule there.

In both cases, I’m writing chapters that are anywhere from 3000-6000 words, and splitting them up accordingly (essentially, dividing into major scenes).

But what this also allows me to do is work for a while on one project, until I either run out of steam and need to let the story sit for a little bit, or get enough ahead that I can focus on other projects. Generally, given the different publication rates between Substack and Vella, that works out.

Sure, I could do this without resorting to serialization, but…one thing that really seems to work is to have the hard deadline. The awareness that I need some lead time for an episode to clear with Amazon, in the case of Vella. And having that deadline seems to be freeing. The brain starts figuring out a lot more stuff.

Case in point–Federation Cowboy, the Vella serial that started publishing this past week.

Oh, I had made a running start at this story a few years ago (and actually had circulated a short story version for a little while). I even have a novel outline. But, dear God, it just wasn’t working. Lovely space opera elements, but I just couldn’t get them to work. I had a few pages with an earlier scene, where Jeff and Caroline meet because he’s retired from a career as a rodeo duelist and wants to go into politics–and Caroline is a political consultant. But then it skipped ahead to the short story, where Jeff the Planetary Representative gets into an argument with a sentient–Converted is the term I’m using–horse colleague, Fenarmin, who is also a former rodeo duelist. Things cross a line and Jeff and Fenarmin end up engaging in the most dangerous and intense version of rodeo dueling–sentient against sentient, which goes until one participant is either disabled or dead. The duel ends with both badly injured. Caroline and Fenarmin’s partner, Rifanel, discover that nefarious forces deliberately used an intoxicant to set up the fight between Jeff and Fenarmin–to sideline both of them before a significant vote in the Federation Congress. The nefarious forces are trying to gain control of a power source found only on an planet which has some…interesting characteristics.

It just didn’t work.

So. I blew dust off of the story a few weeks ago and started working with it. I went back to that first scene. I decided to keep the tone somewhat light-hearted, by allowing my human characters to choose usenames that reflect their aspirations when they reach adulthood. Caroline wants to get away from old Earth and her family. Jeff wants financial security for him and his extended family. Rifanel is a powerful mare who wants what is best for her extended herd. Fenarmin wants to make amends for a bad family history.

And then the pieces kept falling together. Both Jeff and Fenarmin were forced to retire by non-rodeo injuries that sabotaged their careers. Jeff was able to prove foul play, but Fenarmin couldn’t. Instead of a power source being the source of contention (and introduced later), a plant-based drug with different effects on different species and tightly controlled by a cartel which–may have ethics issues of its own–is what everyone’s fighting over.

The cool thing is that the twists keep popping up as I write along. But this is not the story I would have written ten years ago, when I first tried to write it. I don’t know if serialization finally kicked things loose, or if the idea finally just had enough time to sit in my brain.

Nonetheless, it’s been a fascinating change in drafting processes. We’ll see how this continues, when I move to writing the fantasy trilogy in the spring.

That is, if something like the Martinieres doesn’t happen along to further distract me (which is what happened three years ago, when I was originally going to write that series.

So this was the week that things kinda fell apart. Hey, sooner or later I knew I would have a bad week. I got some words down, but there were a couple of days that were more about doing other things and not getting words down. Mind you, some of those things that I did were important, after all. One day that ended up with several lengthy phone calls with husband and friends. One day of managing problems with an online insurance payment. Several days of grogginess due to body aches because of medicine hangovers.

Stuff happens. It’s just the way it is.

On the other hand, I managed to get A Different Life: Now. Always. Forever. uploaded to Amazon, Draft2Digital, and IngramSpark. I made the full wrap cover for the paperback. That whole process took a big chunk out of one day, but now the book is uploaded and in pre-orders for the February 7th release.

I finished enough of Federation Cowboy to get ten episodes uploaded to Kindle Vella. It will start releasing 3x a week on Tuesday. Now I just need to get several more big chunks written so that I can focus on other things, like creating marketing plans for the year. Setting up accounts as part of my promotional plan. Planning the fantasy series, or at least beginning some sort of planning so that I can start work on it in a month or two. Fiddling with Pinterest and Post.

The Goddess’s Vision books are not going to be serialized. I may change my mind at some point, but right now, Kindle Vella is for work that is partially visualized and is my incentive to get that stuff finished and out in the world. If bonuses end in March, as rumored, then it will be less of a priority. I just don’t seem to have many readers there. Martiniere Stories is pretty much committed to The Cost of Power for 2023. Though I’ve had some interesting little twists pop up…such as well, I might end up doing more with the Zingter nanos (which will start showing up in the serial version about March). I’ve come up with some thoughts about just how Ruby manages to implement mind control vocals in this world without formal training and programming, and it’s all tied into Zingter. Ruby in this universe may also start seeing the multiverse-traveling digital thought clones at about the same time as Gabe–and this universe’s Philip becomes aware of them very early, especially the version of himself that is aggressively attacking other versions of Gabe and Ruby in other universes. And…influencing other versions of Philip to go over-the-top.

But this is more of a fanfic project (yes, I consider writing alternative versions of my own world to be fanfiction, maybe my ultimate fanfic).

Federation Cowboy is also taking some significant twists from the original plan. It’s going to be interesting when I start balancing the serial work with non-serial work, because what I am really starting to like about serial work is that I can work on one thing for a while, get ahead of required episodes for several weeks (if not months), and then work on another project while letting that one simmer. I think it’s actually causing me to create more meaningful work because of that simmer stage. I’ll not completely leave a serial project alone–I’ll go back and poke at it, tweak what’s already been posted (but not post revisions, serial work is rough draft only), and let the brain chew on what I have in progress.

Having stories be drafted in a serial form with set release times is actually kinda freeing, really. I can say to myself, “well, I’m this far ahead on this project, so I can turn my focus elsewhere” without losing precious momentum. It’s very interesting and different. Hit a roadblock on one project? Well, with enough of a publication cushion, I can switch out to something that needs advancing. The Substack schedule is once a week while the Vella schedule is three times a week. I’m doing much more drafting with Substack, while with Vella, I’m poking at already-written stuff that just needs to be extended into something that is at least novella-length.

With non-serial projects, though, there isn’t that sense of accomplishment when I’ve written enough to upload for publication. I have to plug straight through the rough draft, then the first revision, then get it out to betas, then revise again.

Will I be able to do both, or will I break down and serialize the Goddess’s Vision books?

We shall see.

It’s been a week. I’m surprised at what I’ve been able to accomplish, given that we had one power outage, I had multiple Zoom meetings this week, there was a farrier appointment where I ended up holding someone else’s horse as well as mine, and oh, I don’t know, a further continuation of the Month of Dread going on.

One of the Zoom meetings was pretty useful–a organizational class aimed at writers that was, for once, created by a neurodivergent person using some useful notions and structuring that differ from the neurotypical “this is how you get organized” structure. The others were either hosting or organizing a monthly podcast.

The organizational class had several good things that stood out to me. First of all, this person (Paulette Porhach) redefined “getting organized” as self-care. Instead of saying “I’m organized,” she suggested saying “I am taking care of myself by being organized.” I thought about it a bit, and wished I had that perspective when working with some of my ADHD middle schoolers. I think that reframing might have made organizational structures more palatable to them. But she also was talking about focusing on the future, biting tasks off into smaller chunks (that’s not new), working backwards slowly (that’s new) and other good things, including creating central electronic and physical locations for organizing information, making it easier to do next time around, creating systems that YOU can trust, not being afraid to adjust and replan when life strikes, and having a weekly executive meeting with yourself.

Interestingly, that last bit was something I had tentatively already started to do, beginning last week. I had decided I needed to do a weekly publication progress plan. Today, I expanded it further to taking notes in my spiral notebook about what did and didn’t get done this week, plus forming a plan for the week ahead. I already do that somewhat in my weekly planner, but writing it down really helps. I also am thinking about writing an updated resume for myself. Not because I’m looking for work, but because I think it will be useful for me as a sort of psychological boost to chronicle everything I am doing to help my assorted communities.

One thing I stumbled across is that when I did my revised 2023 long bio, I separated it into several widely spaced paragraphs. This became useful in a couple of instances this week when I needed to use portions of the full bio but not the whole thing.

So. What did I accomplish in the past week?

–Began drafting Federation Cowboy and finished a five-episode first chapter. That gives me almost two weeks worth of episodes (posting 3x a week). However, the story has changed somewhat and I needed to redraft my working outline. Otherwise, I might have been able to start uploading this week (I prefer to have a two-week lead on serial publishing, just in case something happens). That said, another chapter will give me that cushion, so I hope to start uploading toward the end of the week. I already have a Vella cover. I may tweak it some more, but for now, it’s ready to roll.

I am discovering that phenomenon when writing in a new world, where I have to stop and think about the worldbuilding and just how much information to feed into the work. I’ve been spoiled by working for three years on the Martinieres, where I had easy access to what I knew about the world. In this far-future world with Converted (raised to sentience and cross-species communication) species, I had to stop and think. What kind of names would birds give themselves? Cattle? And then I had to cut out a whole section of writing because while it was useful and helped me understand the world, it just. didn’t. work. for the story. Oh well.

–I finished the production of A Different Life: Now. Always. Forever. ebook and print interiors. Now I just need to write the final blurb, create the paperback, create the promotion campaign, and get it uploaded for preorders before the February 7th release.

–I backed up almost all my photos (forgot to do the promotional photos on the desktop itself) and Dropbox files onto my new external hard drive that is compatible with the MacBookAir’s USB-C ports. For the first time, I actually can access my current photo catalog on a laptop. That’s huge.

–I revised and submitted a new short story (which has received its first reject, from Clarkesworld, which is not surprising–they’re fast and it was a long shot to get sold there anyway). I now have eleven short stories in circulation.

–Both of my other meetings were productive and useful, and I’m glad I’ve started note-taking for a lot of this stuff in a spiral-bound notebook. I have a lot of these, left over from teaching days and my own college days in the Master’s program. Some kids kept their spirals that I provided for journaling, others didn’t. Rather than throw them out, I discarded the kid writing. I can write what’s included in the notebook on the front cover when it’s done, and meanwhile, recent stuff is handy where I want it. That’s where I did my executive meeting notes.

What didn’t get done?

In one word, PROMOTION. That’s the biggest hole in my writing business. I did small things, but I did not get a lot of the visibility work completed that I need to do to promote my backlist. Or what I have coming out.

I have some notes about what I need to do on that front this coming week. Fortunately, I don’t have as much to do with meetings and horse stuff. Farrier always eats up my entire morning, no matter what.

Life is…busy. We’ll see how this week goes.

Well, we’ll see how long these last. One of the processes I decided upon–not necessarily a New Year’s resolution but a musing in my evening journal last night–is that I need to do a weekly checkback with my projected publication and craft schedule for the month to see if I’m on track to finish what I have planned. Part of that checkback is going to be a weekly accountability post. This is as much for me as it is for anyone else. I need the time to clear my mind and think about how I’m working.

Some of this is an attempt to quantify and observe my progress. I may dig out some of my old behavior tracking schedules–where I record what I’m doing at what time and for how long–to see how my behavior changes. I already know that the time of year definitely affects things, because I need daylight to do things with the horse. I also know that I get more fatigued after dark a lot of the time. These posts and the weekly accountability schedule review are a means of tracking what I’m doing, and I may stop doing them once I’ve internalized some structures (look, as a former special ed teacher, I should be able to apply some of these techniques to me, right? Right?).

With no further blathering, here’s what I accomplished in the way of weekly goals:

Writing:

• Completed In the Land Where Dragons Grow, the short story for the month.
• Did some thinking about The Cost of Power, annotations in chapter outlines.
• Did some thinking about Federation Cowboy, enough that I feel comfortable beginning work on it.
• Did some brainstorming about the Goddess’s Vision series, including a possible worldbuilding short story that I may submit to an anthology call.

Promotion:

• Finished writing up an interview.
• Made contact with one reviewer for a potential review in April.
• Assorted networking.
• Appearance on B-Cubed Sunday morning last Sunday.

Editing:

• Completed edits for a client.
• Completed edits on A Different Life: Now. Always. Forever. so that I can begin production for the February 7th release.

Other Writing:

• Sent out three short stories that had come back in December, plus one more that I had missed earlier.
• Board meeting minutes for NIWA, took notes at Saturday meeting.
• Renewed membership in ALLi.

No craft or sewing work this week.

Planning promotion; picture by author

The standard notion about scheduling your writing is that the earlier in the day that you write, the better it is.

That doesn’t really work for me anymore. Oh, it was a good idea when I was working full time because a.) the only time I had to write where I wasn’t dealing with brain fatigue was early in the morning. By the time I got home, I was usually wiped out, mentally fatigued, and at best only good for editing that day’s work and making notes for the next day’s writing progress.

Things change. I really struggled with that notion when my cataract was growing because I needed time in the morning to get my eyes working and focusing.

Now, it’s an issue of when is my brain most awake? What activities work best at what time of the day?

I started looking back at my schedule over the past year and came to certain realizations.

First, the optimal time of day for writing is much more flexible for me these days than it used to be. It seems to change with the seasons and with what I need to do. Right now, I find that writing is happening in the afternoons and early evenings, same for editing. I can’t do much writing early in the day anymore. My brain isn’t quite ready to go into creative work. But…

Second. I found that when I left promotion and social media work to afternoons and evenings, after writing, far too often I ended up closing those tabs and moving on. I just didn’t have the brain power to deal with a lot of the work involved with promotion. But–I found that if I did the work in the morning, it was easier to pull things together and do the work than when I left it in the afternoon. I find it harder to face that work in the afternoon.

Third. I need to remain flexible about scheduling, in part due to seasonal changes. One of the big changes that happens from winter to summer is when I see the horse/go riding/do outdoor stuff. In winter, that tends to happen more often midday. In summer, that needs to be morning or late afternoon (mid-afternoon is the heat of the day here). The horse stuff is always late afternoon because I prefer to ride when it’s cooling down rather than heating up. It works better for me. Also, outside chores timing is important.

Now, one thing is that this is based not on detailed observational tracking but just thinking about my working process as it has changed. So far, I have not needed to explicitly block out writing time because so far I’ve been keeping up with it.

This process will probably change over time, but what I’m learning…is that remaining flexible is the key.