Writing:

I finished Part 1 of BLOOD OF SALT, TEARS OF PEARL this month! After one round of intense rewrites and two rounds of edits over the course of several months, I managed to reduce the original word count of the first eight chapters and two prologues from 61,541 words down to five chapters (and no prologues!) at 26,245 words, which means I have cut 35,296 words from the book so far. I still have Parts 2-5 to rewrite and edit, so with luck, the total word count will shrink more and more, until I reach a normal length of book that can’t also be used as a blunt weapon.

I have to say I’m very pleased with the result of all this work so far. It took roughly four drafts to get to this point (and only on the first part of the book), but the story is getting closer and closer to the book I imagined it would be when I first came up with the idea. It feels good to have roughly 20% of the book complete (though it will need to pass the scrutiny of beta readers eventually) as I move on to the next section of the book.

Word Counts:

Blog/Newsletter: 768
BLOOD OF SALT, TEARS OF PEARL: (+315) edits
Cartridges & Catacombs: 1470

Total Words Written Last Month: 2,553
Total Words Written in 2021: 71,662

Plans for This Month:

I don’t actually have any plans for this month. I’m making a concentrated effort to not actively work on BLOOD OF SALT, TEARS OF PEARL this month, just because December tends to be a chaos month where I get nothing done anyway, and I do need time off on occasion, especially after such intense editing the latter half of this year. Taking the month off should help me gear up to work hard come January.

That said: I have been noodling some ideas that I may hash out in the meantime. I’m considering breaking into another genre/subgenre with slightly lighter fare, specifically romcoms and cozy mysteries, which may or may not feature speculative elements or settings. I don’t know if I can completely remove myself from fantasy, but I feel like these ideas have been spinning in the back of my mind for long enough that I ought to give an honest effort to make them happen.

I’ve also been noodling with ideas that play with form and format. I have an epistolary mystery (possibly murder, possibly aliens, possibly occult, idk) in mind that would be told across letters, bulletin notices, diary entries, newspaper articles, obituaries, and the like, that I’m really interested in trying out.

My current book is a monster to work on, so it would be nice to have something lighter to focus on when progress stalls on the main work. So that’s a possibility for this month.