One Step at a Time

It’s been another long week, but my first goal of this round is complete: I met all the writer’s workshop deadlines and finished in good standing. The feedback I received on my Red Slaves stories will undoubtedly make them all stronger–though first I needed a break and a breather this weekend. Based on the goal of one stay-at-home date night… hubs and I have agreed that really, the goal needs to be one day at home together with no running around or socializing. It’s so powerfully rejuvenating to have had this day two weeks in a row, now, that I almost feel fully human.

😀

The next step in the ladder of my goals for this round is to begin integrating the workshop feedback and to go through the re-release process with all the books I had previously distributed through Smashwords. Gayla has highly recommended Draft2Digital as a replacement that seems to be generating both better sales results and more reliable reporting for her, so we’ve been talking about me following her footsteps for almost a year. While it feels like a big process, I know mostly I’m making it that way because of the revisions I’m envisioning for Book 1. Book 2 won’t get the same treatment. Then it’ll be on to Book 3. I’ve been promising that to readers for over a year, and I’m not sure how long it will actually take me to finish the current draft once I incorporate the suggestions from my workshop colleagues, but I’d like to have it done this summer. I need that head-space for some of my other stories, and I know how frustrating it is to have to wait forever for the conclusion to a series I’ve enjoyed.

The re-release will have new cover art, though, too. Gayla has some exciting ideas, and we both want the covers to align across all three books as well as more clearly reflect the Urban Fantasy genre conventions and expectations.

🙂

This week I also got an unexpected chance at an ARC of Liana Brooks’ latest book (coming out Tuesday), so I’m ready to go with the first review of this round. Walking… well. Again, I seem to have mostly left my phone at home this week, so I only tracked 2 miles across three walks. But we’ve been doing a lot of quarter- and half-mile walks with the babies as 5- to 10-minute pee breaks. The up-side of that is that KouKi seems FINALLY to have grokked coming to find me to lead me to the front door to take her out to pee. (Hence: QUICKLY out the door and no phone tracking setup!) I’m happy to be spending less time cleaning up house-training mis-fires, but am really wondering how long before she can hold it for long enough for me to do more than finish a paragraph… The other next thing I need to be paying attention to is studying for the PMP. I’m supposed to be dedicating 30-45 minutes per day on that, and with the workshop requirements am two weeks behind. We’ll see how well I catch up.

Mostly, I’m elbow-deep in fantasy and sci-fi in my mind–and hubs is egging me on, sending more Oopsart and other supernatural stories to entice my brain to chase those ideas–so I’m happy I’ll be leaning into more of a reliable schedule over the coming weeks. I’m also on the look-out for 10 toxic habits that drain our energy. Marc & Angel Hack Life is quickly becoming one of my favorite blogs and the suggestion that pretending things are okay when they aren’t is an energy-suck is both logical and apparent… in hindsight. I’m going to avoid that in the future, now, too. Meantime, check out how my ROW80 friends are doing on their goals. I’ll return again next week with my latest report on my progress.