Underextended

Monday Mind Dump

I’ve got seven Scrivener windows open right now and about to open another one. :D I had forgotten how I used to work was with three+ projects at a time so when one wasn’t moving as fast as I wanted, I could jump to another one and give it time to percolate. I. FORGOT! I work best when I can bounce from one story to another. Easier for me to meet targets, too.

So, I’ve been writing in Fool’s Gold and Glass Castles only for over a month, prioritizing Fool’s Gold. I didn’t write a fresh new story for Auntie Heroes like I wanted to. Then, I dug up an old story that I realized fit the call and spent the day revising it. It’d been over two years since I wrote the story. Polished it a little further and deleted some excess.

And once again, moaned that I couldn’t work on the project I really want to work on, because I’d hit another false start. It’s not that bad. I still have a good story here. It’s just not the one that I need it to be. Plus, I need to get that sequel to Rex Regis revised…and my MG novel, Jax Riven finished. Currently fighting the desire to stop focusing on Glass Castles and start on Living Flame, the actual first novel in my Dragonfae Cycle.

Problem with that. :D I now have 4 and a half novellas for the prequel series, which is more directed to an adult audience. Classical, like Blood Diamonds. There are more mature themes and situations within it. Oddly enough. Also set in the 1880s to 1915. :D It’s now progressed to the point that I really want to wrote volume 5 to take place during WW1 as a precursor to when I do it for another universe.

I’ve found that once I research an era, I like to explore it through different characters and worlds. That’s how I ended up with setting novels from Boons and Banes, The Arcane, and Dragonfae Cycle in this time. I don’t have to do a ton more research, of course. In the course of doing that, I find a lot of stuff I can’t use. That goes in a file for use in another book later.

I hit 1500s Ireland and am getting the urge to do more novels set in the 1500s in the region. But I know I shouldn’t. There’s what I can manage and then spreading myself too thin. I don’t want to do that with obligations and risk disappointing anyone. Now, I couldn’t do anything about my current slowdown. Thankful it didn’t affect my mind! And now, it’s warming up. I’ve got more energy. Just need to reclaim my workflow and that’s still taking time.

So, Fool’s Gold, Living Flame, and Arcadian Ascendant are my publishing goals this year. Unless I sell Wrong Turn, When it Raines, or Shadow Queen. :) I’m not overextended. My brain gets bored. Currently have multiple Dragonfae Cycle project files open that I’m going to close. It’s not time to work on Fae Path. That’s where there are already 3 and a half complete novellas I intend to revise into short novels. The half wasn’t supposed to be a novella on its own, but I didn’t want to add new POVs to volume 3 and now I’m looking at it and not sure if I want to make it a story of its own or reintegrate it into volume 4. The characters kind of deserve their own.

Bordel de merde.