Writing Projects Update

Today’s post is a short one. I really just wanted to take the time to recap where I am on my writing projects.

Flameborne — The sequel to Ashborne. I gotta tell you, I’m loving this book. New plot twists. New challenges. Poor Joelle. The revision process is about halfway completed. It’s taken longer than expected because last year we had a little family chaos. But I have a new writing schedule, and I hope to have the revisions completed before spring. After that, it’ll go off to beta readers, an editor, and I’ll contact an artist for the cover design. Yay!!! It’s hard to believe sometimes this will be my second published book. If you haven’t read the first one yet, click here to get it. 

Jakob’s Journal — Jakob’s Journal was a side project I wrote, a companion piece to go along with the Ashborne series. Most of the entries are here on the blog. You’ll notice I stopped posting because the final entries coincide with events in Flameborne. My plan is this: Once Flameborne is released, I’ll pull together all the Jakob’s Journal entries, including the final few waiting in the wings, and publish them as a free companion e-book. Yay! Free things!

Short stories — I work on these while at writing workshops or when I only have a short writing window. I currently have about ten rough drafts. Once cleaned up and polished, I’ll send them out for submission. My favorites are one about a creepy old woman who finds lost things, one about a giant face in the sand (inspired by one of my Thursday Thoughts posts), and one about a mysterious bridge.

Poetry — last spring I spent some time writing poetry. I’d like to add to the poems I wrote then and have about thirty solid poems by the end of the year that I can pull together in a chapbook. This part of my writing is probably the most unstructured, and yet the one I feed ideas into all the time. I have an app on my phone where I write down random words, thoughts, or phrases. If I’m walking along and see a woman in a strange hat, or watch two magpies hop and dance across the snow-pocked fields, I can jot down my thoughts before I lose them. Sometimes the phrases stick with me and drive me crazy, as if a poem were dragging me by the hair and forcing me to sit down and listen to it. So I do. And then I write. Which makes posting any type of recap challenging. I don’t know when the poem will show up. But I know I’m going to be there to listen to it when it does.

All in all, I like where I am. A plan is in place, the motivation is there, and new ideas are bursting into life every week. I also know the unexpected might show up to knock me back a few weeks and that’s okay. I feel bad for letting the readers down, but I also know that my family comes first. And I’m human, albeit a little strange sometimes, but I’m still human. I do what I can do.

And yet, I’m excited about this year. I have a really good feeling about it. This is going to be the year. Watch.