End of August Project Update

The last couple of days have been very much "A Hard Day's Night" work-wise, so I'll just quickly summarize where I am with my multitude of writing projects:

1. Cozy Mystery #2--I'm not sure yet if I want to call it Restaurants and Revenge or Food Safety Can Be Fatal. (I think the second one is more fun, but since I work in food safety, I'm not sure how that would look professionally.) My plan is to write about 500 words a day and aim for about 15,000 words/month. I'm around 13,000 at the moment, so I should make my goal. I just need to figure out a few more details about the murder.

2. Untitled Fantasy Short Story--I have a complete first draft around 4,300 words. I rewrote the opening scene, which naturally will affect the other scenes even though they feel more complete to me. Hopefully by September I can start submitting it to markets.

3. Dryads and Dragons--My original plan for August was to write about 200 words on this project per day. I made my goal for several days, but between squeezing in other projects and trying to figure out how I get from the middle to the end, I haven't worked on it for a while. 

4. Cozy Mystery #1--It's been about a month since I finished it, so it's time for the first read-through. How many inconsistencies will I find? Did I portray my heroine's Filipino heritage accurately? What will the beta readers think? Tune in sometime next month (hopefully) for the answers! In the meantime, enjoy the Beatles:

https://youtu.be/Yxq40ZYIibw

June IWSG: No Secrets, Just Plans

It's hard to believe it's June, isn't it? I hope you have some perfect days this month. But first, it's time for another Insecure Writer's Support Group post. Learn more about the IWSG on their website, Facebook, and Twitter. Our hosts this month are Pat Garcia, J.Q. Rose, and Natalie Aguirre. We've been posed the following question: Writers have secrets! What are one or two of yours, something readers would never know from your work?

Well, when it comes to revealing secrets, especially online, there's only one thing for me to say, and that's...

So, let me tell you how my writing is going instead.

My main focus at the moment is a cozy mystery with paranormal elements. It's called Murder at Magic Lake, and I currently have about 22,000 words drafted. (Yes, this is a quarantine novel.) I aim to write about 500 new words each day, or at least enough to get me to the next 500 or 1,000 mark. If I have enough time afterwards, I also try to work on Dryads and Dragons, the third book in my urban fantasy trilogy. After losing most of my first draft back in February, I'm over 24,000 words with that. A short story I submitted to an anthology back in February was rejected, though the editor was very encouraging and urged me to submit to next year's anthology. I should look it over again and send it to another market. However, I've drawn up a new marketing plan based on advice from indie author Susan Kaye Quinn, and that's going to take priority. I'll be publishing my work directly to Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and Apple, but first I may update some blurbs and keywords for my novels. It might also be time to update the covers for Lyon's Legacy and Twinned Universes, since they're from 2011 and 2012. There's a lot to do, so I need to break it down into manageable tasks.We may not be able to travel anywhere this summer, but I'll still have plenty of uses for my vacation time!

Are you revealing a secret for IWSG, or did you choose another topic? Feel free to share in the comments. In the meantime, it's back to writing for me.