And so comes the time to pay the piper … to take stock of what has been accomplished (or not) in the past month!
Here is the to-do from May’s Project List, appropriately marked up according to what has or has not been completed!
Print more business cards in prep for con seasonMentally prep for my ConQuesT panels and readingOrder giveaway materials for ConQuesTCompile NaNoWriMo packets and sign up sheet to offer at ConQuesTHave Kevin reformat DREAMERS to make it super pretty- Re-upload DREAMERS to Amazon and also to Draft2Digital (made a last minute change and have not gotten final version back from Kevin yet…)
Upload another PRIMUS chapter to PatreonSend fun and awesome stuff to my mailing list twiceMake a post for the Wordwraiths blogEdit 7449 word MG story for an editing client- Edit chapters 18 – 20 of PRIMUS (Nearly completed this one. I heavily edited 18 and 19 and so did not get to 20 this month)
Attend Planet Comic Con and say hello to my fun friends Adron Buske and Dayton Ward, as well as the Uptown Authors (table #1641!)Some business-y stuff for the business of Wordwraiths Books which I will not bore you with here
A VERY productive month if I do say so myself! It felt like an insane whirlwind of craziness in which I wasn’t sure where my own brain was most of the time, but it was also an incredible amount of FUN!
Planet Comic Con was an absolute BLAST … I cannot believe how huge that convention has become. YOWZA!!! It’s a madhouse! But a splendid fun madhouse, to be sure. I caught up with friends, went to great panels, and shopped fun vendors. I even found a steampunk writer’s bracer to add to my steampunk cosplay! Score!
The very next weekend was ConQuest KC, a writing-centric SFF convention. This year was my VERY FIRST YEAR of being a panelist. I sat on three panels and did a live reading of some of my work in front of strangers — also for the first time. May 2016 was a huge step for me as far as feeling professional goes. Also in managing nerves. It really wasn’t was bad as I’d thought it’d be … turns out if I’m talking about something I really love, like writing, I don’t mind being up in front of a room full of people so much! (But more on that surreal experience later!)
The rest of author-hood keeps chugging along … as Jeff Goins says, “You gain momentum by doing a little bit each day.” It’s sooooo easy to get overwhelmed here, but keeping my focus on bite-sized pieces really helps. DREAMERS is with the formatter to get another face-lift, the DREAMERS audiobook is now live and FREE for mailing list members, and soon the ebook will be free as well. PRIMUS continues to give me fits, most recently due to some beta reader feedback which has me re-evaluating this whole middle section of plot. But that’s why you need beta readers! They keep you from releasing a wad of suck into the world! 😉 (More on that later, too …)
But along with the frustration of attempting to tame the long form novel comes some short form awesome news … during ConQuest I participated in the Story in a Bag challenge. (some of you may remember this) It’s where you draw 5 random prompts from 5 different bags and then write a story using all of those prompts in an hour. Those stories are then voted on by convention attendees to determine a “winner” (a favorite, really). Well, my story this year, tentatively titled “The Savior of Humanity” … WON BEST IN SCI FI!!!! ^_^ I couldn’t believe it! The last time I won was my first year participating, back in 2013. While I was personally very happy with this year’s story, I did not expect to win given the number of entries. (50 of them)
But, so it goes. AND, I fully plan to edit this one and submit to Daily Science Fiction. Unfortunately that means I can’t share it with you, yet.
I’m pretty excited for this story’s future though.
And for me, that’s it for now. I’ve gotta get back to beating PRIMUS into presentable shape and gearing up all these shorts for publication. And oh yeah, Wordwraith Books. There’s all that business-y stuff to do for that, too ….
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My goodness! You are amazing! How did you manage to accomplish so many things in May? And you had a family and full time job as well! I think the neatest thing was that you found you actually enjoyed being on the panels and doing a reading! New horizons await you in your career.
Thanks for reading and for the comment. 🙂 I did so love being on those panels! It was a blast!