Welcome to the grand illusion!

I said I was going to talk about this month’s writing goals, didn’t I? And here it is, already the 7^th. (Also known as the 33^rd anniversary of the release of one of Styx’s best-known and best-loved albums, The Grand Illusion. But I digress.)

First, last month:

• get an overdue story to the editor (who kindly allowed me a few grace days) – decided, reluctantly, to let this one go. Among other reasons, the story was insisting on becoming a novella. So now I have an erotic steampunk novella to write at some point!
• get everything done for Out of the Frying Pan and back to Teresa – DONE! Of course, then she got it back to me, and I did more work on it, and we have another confab in an hour…
• do the edits/rewrites for Waking the Witch and get them to the editor who requested them – DONE!
• write Chapter 3 of Seasoned With Danger and submit it to the first wave of publishers – Nope. Never got to this. It’s now scheduled for the end of this month.
• do a brief polish through What Beck’ning Ghost (because I wrote it 20 years ago (holy crap!) and I want to make sure nothing’s extremely dated in it), write a fresh proposal, and submit it to the first wave of publishers – Polish done. Proposal written and sent to a couple reviewers, who sent back the exact feedback I needed, so now I have to rewrite it and get the package out to editors.
• write a story for the Mountain Magic anthology – Alas, no go on this one. Something had to give, and I needed to focus on novels.
• write a story for the Crossed Genres anthology – after some consideration, decided to let this one go, too. A balance of research time vs potential payment…and in the end, novel work won out.
• write a story for Alison’s Bondage anthology – In progress.
• write (or at least start) a story for Kristina’s Dream Lovers anthology – In progress.
• pitch rose beads article to Renaissance Magazine (if time) – Not yet.
• prep “In Her Hands” for Kindle, etc. (if time) – I decided on a cover photograph (with help from some folks), and the file itself should be good to go. I have to design the cover, sign up at Amazon as a publisher, etc.

As I mentioned, we’re doing a fair amount of traveling this month, so my goals are not quite as crazy:

• keep working on Out of the Frying Pan revisions
• finish “’Golf’ Spelled Backwards” for Alison’s bondage anthology (this week)
• finish story for Dream Lover anthology (this week)
• revise What Beck’ning Ghost synopsis (ideally this week)
• finish market list for What Beck’ning Ghost and get the proposal circulating
• write Chapter 3 of Seasoned With Danger and do market research (to mail in Aug)
• write story for Lesbian Cops anthology
• write story for Indecent anthology

I know I’m not going to have time to work on the “In Her Hands” cover or the rose beads article pitch, so they’re officially bumped to August.

Okay, back to work with me!