January has simultaneously been the longest month of my life and a whirlwind of not having enough time to do what I need to do. I managed to plot BLOOD OF SALT, TEARS OF PEARL, my “The Little Mermaid” meets “The Beauty and the Beast” in Medieval Scotland fantasy novel, but I still need to type all of my plot cards into a proper outline.

The rest of the month was spent working on a personal project of mine, which I can now share with everyone: The Ozark Book Authority, a non-profit organization with a mission to spread literacy by bringing readers together across Northwest Arkansas. We’re still in early stages, but we’re in the process of filing all the proper paperwork to get 501(c)(3) status. We’re currently trying to schedule events for the 2019 calendar year, all while trying to gather as much information as possible from local authors, book clubs, and writing groups to fill out our website. It’s been a lot of work, but I’m so excited to see things come together and become what I dream it will eventually be.

Also, I turned 30!

Word Counts in January

BLOOD OF SALT, TEARS OF PEARL: 1740 (plot/query)
Patreon: 1785
Blog: 1578
Other: 2143

(Plus about a thousand emails and website pages that I’ve written this month that I don’t have word count for.)

Total Words Written in January: 7246
Total Words Written in 2019: 7246

January Patreon Round-up

Here’s a list of everything I posted in the month of January!

For $7 Patrons:
ARTWORK: Sylpha, Firbolg Druid Sketch 

ARTWORK: Sylpha, Finished Painting

For $5+ Patrons:
POEM: “Thirty Years on this Earth, A Blip Among the Stars” – A poem about turning thirty years old and looking forward.

For $4 Patrons:
VIDEO: Plotting BLOOD OF SALT, TEARS OF PEARL – PART 1 – a look at how I come up with scene cards when plotting. 

VIDEO: Plotting BLOOD OF SALT, TEARS OF PEARL – PART 2 – the follow up to Part 1, I take the scene cards from Part 1 and organize them into three acts, adding and changing scenes as I go.

For $3+ Patrons:
Writing a Mock Query Letter / Back Cover Copy – a look at how I take a rough draft of a query to a more polished version.

Public:
A New Printer! – You guys made it possible for me to buy a new printer this month, so thank you!!

Note: There were no excerpts for my $2 patrons this month as I did not work on a written draft, but I’ll make it up to them next month!

Plans for February:

I expect another month of too much to do and not enough time to do it. Ozark Book Authority is taking up a lot of my time, and will continue to do so for a little while longer. Once we’re established and get some events scheduled, things should slow down quite a bit, but until then, it’s go go go. Thankfully, we have a little bit of funding to get us started, but there is so. much. to. do.

Writing-wise, I want to get an outline put together for BLOOD OF SALT, TEARS OF PEARL soon and start drafting that next week. I have a goal to write 20,000 words by the end of February, which is ambitious with everything else going on, even if it feels to me like a low number to shoot for. (My first thought was to aim for 40,000 words, but with everything else I have to do, I really doubt that I’ll be able to write that much.) 20,000 words will put me that much closer to the end, so I’ll take what I can get. I’m going to try something a little bit different with this draft and really really try not to edit as I go. I’m going to use every damn trick I can think of to get the draft down as quickly as possible without going back to edit, in the hopes that I can finish the book more quickly than my usual process (AKA 6-9 months of agonizingly slow progress). So, we’ll see.

Of course, I have Patreon to update throughout the month, so I’ll be producing content for that as well. I’m enjoying the work I’m doing , and I hope that others will choose to support my work through their platform.