Quick Writing Update

I think it's been a while since I posted a project update, so here's a quick summary of what I've been working on recently:

I submitted a solarpunk short story called "Inside, Outside" to Grist's Imagine 2200 climate fiction contest. While I think this is my best submission yet (I came up with the idea early enough to revise this story multiple times), I know this contest gets a lot of submissions. If it doesn't earn a reward, I'll submit it to other markets.

While I was on vacation, I made the last edits to my cozy mystery, Restaurants and Revenge. I've also submitted a request for cover art to the designers of this series. Depending on how quickly they come up with something, I'm hoping to make the preorder available to tie in with a promotion next month for the first book in the series, Murder at Magic Lake.

Now that I'm done with the second cozy mystery, it's time to move on to the next book in the series, called Bubble Tea and a Body. I already have a partial draft that I worked on before being distracted by other projects. I've reread it to familiarize myself with what I already wrote and made some more plotting decisions. Hopefully I can finish the first draft by the end of the year.

Progress on The Season Between, my fantasy short story collection set in the Season Avatars universe, has been slow. I plan to include five stories, one for each Season Avatar and one "ensemble" story where they're all working together. I have decent drafts for the individual stories, but the longer ensemble story is taking longer to complete. I would love to finish this project by the end of the year, but it really depends on how much time I can devote to it. It's been harder to find writing time this year with everything else I have to do. Hopefully I can figure out how to claw back more time for writing and crocheting soon.

How are your writing or other creative projects coming along? Feel free to share your progress in the comments.