Hello September!

Looks like the summer's over, huh? It's Labor Day today, aka the unofficial last day of summer. Though one look at the weather for this week makes it pretty clear nature's not ready to let go of the heat just yet. I have the day off today so I figured I should get some writing in, at the very least some planning and blogging.

Less Than Three has put out a new anthology call, this time for fairy tales. I'm really excited about this one, because I have a few fairy tales I've already written I could rework, but there's one in particular about the moon that I never finished. This is the perfect opportunity, and better yet, I have until The end of March which means I can continue work on the two stories I'm currently working on getting done before the end of the year.

The story I'd originally intended for the Lovely Dark and Deep anthology is now firmly into novella length. I don't expect it will be long enough to be a novel, but it's certainly much longer than it had been when I first wrote in for the antho. I'm glad now I didn't submit it for that. There was a giant chunk of the story missing that I needed to fill in. Like a good 8,000 words worth. Maybe more by the time I'm really done.

So once that's done, I'll have it beta-read, make edits, and then submit it. Then I'll move on to the story I wanted to write for the Villains, Inc. anthology. Again, for various reasons, I couldn't get the story to fit right, and I realize it was because the characters just were not villains. Possibly misunderstood ones, but I was trying too hard to shoehorn them and it was hurting the story. So I'll just write it as in needs to be written and submit it as a standalone as well. Once it's all said and done, I expect it'll be novella length too.

I've been writing - not quite as frequently as I should - but I'm still out of the dry spell so I'm happy enough. Instead of writing during my lunch breaks like I used to, I've been going to the gym. I'm healthier, sure, but my writing was suffering for it. I'm still working out a better balance.

All in all, I'm pretty satisfied with my progress.