June:

original short fiction = 3871

July:

original short fiction = 4172

That includes the rest of DDJJ2 ("Dix Dayton and the Miner from Mars"), "Dear Ones" (which is now going as "A Fine Warm Tale On A Winter's Night"), and "Hands On", as well as bits and pieces of other things. Technically June includes 296 words of Street Magic, which is a novel, ( Read more... )

There are rumors swirling around that Kim Jong-Un is dying (of a failed heart operation, of coronavirus, of who knows what) and/or already dead.

( cut for spoilers for not one, but two, as-yet-unpublished novels )

A little while ago, I had an epiphany of sorts: I was dragging my feet about the final-push querying on Highway of Mirrors because it really was time to put it aside and try something else. (I still think HoM is a good book, but it's time and then some to admit it's not going to be my debut novel.) The other part of the epiphany was that, of the ( Read more... )

Happy New Year! (How on earth did that happen?)

I ended up with a surprise week off from the Day Job, I think because my manager forgot to put me on the schedule. So I decided I would spend it querying Highway of Mirrors. Good plan. I also told myself, way back at the end of November, that I could take a month off from Lightning Strikes TwiceI ( Read more... )

In my efforts to get back in the query trenches, I'm looking at an agent who has a long and unnecessarily-detailed (yet oddly appealing) submission form. One of the several things she wants, in addition to query and synopsis, is a one-line pitch.

Now, I've never had a good short pitch for Highway of Mirrors. The plot is highly dependent on a lot ( Read more... )

old-mission stories: 65 ( Read more... )

original short fiction: 257
Highway of Mirrors revisions: 1571

Total new words in February: 1828

Better than I expected, and not bad for a month in which word-count really wasn't the point.

I've added a little over 4k words to Highway of Mirrors in this revision pass, mostly in the form of little characterization snippets ( Read more... )

Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention the revisions are done ( Read more... )

Revision generally comes to me in one of two ways. There's the reading-through of the text, when I come across something that just doesn't ring right or could be better. Those usually aren't too hard to work the new text in (though if something was wrong the first time, there's no guarantee that I can come up with the right thing now). And then ( Read more... )

Highway of Mirrors revisions: 2489 ( Read more... )