The Challenge (dun dun dun)

A friend in the Oregon Writers Network is taking the week of to do a novel-in-a-week challenge and pinged the list we have for such things to see if anyone else was interested in joining. I believe we have someone doing the second half of a novel, and someone working on an nonfiction book.

For me, I’m not in quite the right place to start a new novel (although I know which one I’d’ve chosen), and I’m not in quite the right place on any of the novels-in-progress. What I am in the right place for is to get ahead on all the upcoming anthologies I want to hit, so I decided to participate with a Story a Day for Seven Days.

First up: Finishing “Braceleted” for The Mammoth Book of Hot Romance. Goal is 6–10K erotic romance. I’m just shy of 2.5K right now. I’m also getting a late start today, because we slept in, then did some scrubbing in the kitchen and tidied the sewing room and started laundry and whatnot.

Other anthologies I’m looking to hit (in no particular order):

• Dollhouse essay contest. Maybe. I don’t have a brilliant idea, and it’s due tomorrow…
• Ghosts and the Uncanny.
• The Way of the Wizard. I’ve already had one story rejected here and I’m about to send another, but if the second gets dinged, I want a fresh story ready to go. And if the second gets accepted, then I have a brand-new story to start circulating!
• Baen’s near-future of manned space exploration contest. This’ll be a challenge, since I so rarely write SF.
• Music for Another World.
• Crimebake.
• Best Bondage Erotica 2011. I’ve got a partial story that I’ll finish up for this.
• Best Lesbian Romance 2011.
• The Christmas Spirit. This one’s 1.3K max, so I may shoehorn it in on another day.

That would clear out my schedule up to an end-of-May novella deadline, provided no new fun projects crop up in the meantime. Well, I know the overnight Denise Little Workshop story will hit me in a bit, but at least I know about when, and how much time I’ll have! :-)