November

It's NaNoWriMo once again.  National Novel Writers' Month.  Yes, I am participating...sort of.  I'm going to be trying to finish three unfinished projects this month--four, if I can manage it. 

Current project: Not yet sure if it's a short novel or long novella.  Detritus.*  Started out with 21.5K words (about 47 pgs, typed, single-spaced, in 12 pt font in Word).  Reviewed and revised all 21.5 K words, and added 2K today.  I know where it's going, and how it's getting there; I'm only limited by typing time and speed (including almost 5 hrs spent on campus on Tuesdays and Thursdays, though tomorrow is freewrite/research day for my students).  I may be finished with a first draft of this one before the weekend's out.  I'm planning on releasing it sometime in January.  Whether I release it as Kindle only or as a CreateSpace paperback is still up in the air.

Next project: Normalcy Bias.  I've got two more stories in that collection to pull from my draft book and type.  Probably will wind up at around 45-50K words, altogether; currently sitting at 36K or so.  I plan on either picking that up immediately following finishing the previous, or just after I finish grading the papers I pick up a week from tomorrow.  Hoping to release it sometime in March or so.

End of the month: The Schrodinger Paradox.**  Again, I know where that one's going, and how it's getting there, but there's a LOT more typing to do--something like another 30K words.  I hope to have it totally finished before the kids are out for Christmas Break, but considering end of semester stuff/catch up housecleaning/Christmas decorating and shopping, I'm not going to be guaranteeing it.  I'm just hoping I can get the first draft finished, and get the alpha readers' feedback incorporated into a second draft before the start of the year.  This one is going to a publishing house's slush pile.  I should hear back in 9 months to a year. 

Assuming I get the first draft of Schrodinger totally finished, and have time left, I'll pick up a vampire story I'd set down a few years ago, and see what I can finish of that.***

Don't worry--this will be the last post I write about writing this month.  I will not spend the whole month griping about how it is (or isn't) going according to plan, and messing with my life (what there is of that).  

*I've found for this one, The Rolling Stones or Shaman's Harvest really gets the words flowing from the keys.  The Pretty Reckless almost does it, but not quite.  

**Figured out that it's not the music stalling things.  It was the fact that I wanted to start it in a place/time it didn't want to be started.  Music is still Starset. 

***The story of how the main character wakes up dead is one of the ones in Normalcy Bias.