Tag: “August 8 2015”

August Writing Projects

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Welcome to the Dog Days, in which I realize the year is more than half over and I feel like I’m standing in the carnage of a whirlwind. It’s at this point in the year that I assess my progress on my goals and realize just how off-track I’ve gotten.

This year feels like the whirlwind was a little bigger, the carnage a little more scattered, and the track in the next county.

Part of the reason for this is my penchant this year to come up with great new ideas and then act on them which results in less energy invested in the projects I planned on doing.

Which is something I did again last month.

After revising/polishing “August 8, 2015”, “A Girl’s Best Friend”, and “Suicide Paris Green”, revising/polishing an old story called “Nix ’96”, adding “Summer Rot” to the Freebies section, posting “Erin Go Bragh” and “There and Not” in the Storytime Jukebox, releasing paperback versions of Gone Missing and The Haunting of the Woodlow Boys, submitting Come to the Rocks, and writing my $25 Patreon goal, I started working on a new project called The Star Reader. Right now I’m writing it as a script, which I’m going to use as an outline to write it as a novel. Basically, I have the skeleton of the story and this way is a good way to sketch out the idea with dialogue so I don’t lose any of this story that’s been bombarding me.

I’m going to keep working on it this month and I’ll hopefully finish it. I think the novel version will be my NaNo project this year, but don’t hold me to it. I may start on that as soon as I’m finished.

Last month, I also started reading (Vampires) Made in America in preparation for one more (hopefully last) round of revisions. There’s not much that needs to be done at this point, so once I’m finished, I’ll see about finding some beta readers who can give it a look.

I’m also going to revise Murderville Season 2. Give it a title and such. And if we hit the $25 goal on Patreon this month, I guess I’ll be revising that, too.

And if I’m lucky, my brain will give me a break from great new ideas. At least for this month.

The last episode of Murderville: The Last Joke goes live on August 8th. But it’s still not too late to become a patron. $1 lets you read, $2 gives you access to bonus material, like a teaser for the next season that’s coming out at the end of the month. And there will be a full teaser episode for season 2 in October for all patrons. You don’t want to miss out!

July Writing Projects

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

June was certainly an interesting month. My primary goal was to get the first draft of Murderville Season 2 written and I did it, though it didn’t happen nearly as easily I thought it would. I was all set to be finished early, before my trip with my roommate to Chicago to see a couple of Cubs games, when disaster struck.

My laptop crashed.

Though I regularly back-up my work, I hadn’t yet backed up Murderville Season 2 (or a few other things). With my laptop dead and my hard drive looking lost, I was feeling pretty hopeless. I bought a new laptop (ouch) and, at a friend’s suggestion, a hard drive enclosure. Luckily for me, I was able to fix the hard drive on my old laptop enough to salvage my work. And I did end up finishing the first draft of Murderville Season 2 before the end of the month.

Still doesn’t have a title yet, though.

This month I plan to do another round of revisions on “August 8, 2015”, “A Girl’s Best Friend”, and “Suicide Paris Green”. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get them completely finished this month (as in polished and pretty), but it’s looking more and more likely that I won’t have the next short story collection out before the end of the year. I feel like I’ve got a hundred things going and I’m not gaining ground on any of them right now.

That’s the risk I run working on more than one thing at a time, but my brain isn’t wired to focus on a single project at once. The risk is usually worth it.

This month I also might try shopping Come to the Rocks. When I started writing it, I figured it was guaranteed to be another self-publishing venture, but after revising and polishing, I think I might see if there’s any good fits out there. Novellas are a hard sell and I imagine that novellas featuring lesbian mermaids, the bisexual women who love them, and the murderous plots developed to keep them safe might be an even harder sell, but there might be a small press out there simply aching for it. Besides, it’s been ages since I’ve even tried to shop something of mine. I might as well dust off those underdeveloped skills and see what’s what.

I’m also struggling to come up with a new $25 goal for the Murderville Patreon. I’ve had some suggestions and I’m mulling them over, but so far, I haven’t decided on anything yet.

Ah, the pressure to make good. It’s the pressure that squishes me quicker than any other.

But! The show goes on and there are only two episodes left! Episode 7 of Murderville: The Last Joke, “To Find a Crime Scene”, goes live on July 11th. $1 gets you a read, $2 gets you access to the bonus content. Don’t miss out just because I haven’t decided on a new goal reward yet!