I Never Intended to Be a Writer #IWSG | September Goals | Bookworm News #SpecFic

The Insecure Writer's Support Group was created by Alex J. Cavanaugh. September's co-hosts are Tyrean Martinson, Tara Tyler, Raimey Gallant, and Beverly Stowe McClure. Find the other IWSG participants here.

September's Question: Have you ever surprised yourself with your writing?

YES! All the time.

While growing up, I never intended to be a writer. Though I've always had a great imagination, I was rather dreadful when it came to writing papers in English classes. The main reason was because I missed learning how to write a paper in high school, and I didn't learn how to write one until a college English class. In high school, I went from regular English 9 to Advanced English 10. Advanced English 9 and College-Bound and regular English 10 learned to write papers. I missed that all so important step. *sighs*

So, as you can probably imagine, I hated writing. In fact, I even told my AP English 12 teacher that I was going to move to a foreign country so I'd never have to write in English again. *laughs* Because I thought I was inept when it came to writing, every time I read something I've written since I've become a writer, I'm surprised and amazed.

Has your writing surprised you? What are your insecurities this month?

---

August was a surprisingly good month for completing my goals.

I finished editing Forged (The Fate Challenges #2), and it's now with my critique partners. I completed my outline edit of Destined (The Fate Challenges #3), formatted the manuscript, and have started editing it. I'm hoping to finish this edit by November 15, and I'm planning to work on Destined during weekdays.

I've been using weekends to work on Soul Reaper series, and I'm making progress on editing the outlines so I'll be ready to start edits and write books 3-5 eventually. I was hoping to start writing A Soul to Take (Soul Reaper #3) in October, but now I'm thinking I should finish the outlines and edit the books I've already written before writing A Soul to Take, especially if I want to have 1-2 Soul Reaper books published before the end of next year. We'll see how it goes.

A big shout out to Christine Rains for finishing her urban fantasy series Totem. All nine novellas are fantastic reads!

Untethered Realms is gearing up to publish the fourth Elements of Untethered Realms anthology. Spirits in the Water will be released in early October, and my story "The Folding Point" is in it. In August, I was busy reformatting the previous anthologies and getting some images ready for #4. Besides being one of the editors and having a story in the anthology, I am also the final proofreader and formatter. It's so much fun to see all of it come together.

Here are my September goals:
- Continue editing Destined. Ideally, I'd like to be at the midway point by the end of this month.
- Format, proofread, and publish (likely as a preorder for an October 2nd or 3rd release date) Spirits in the Water.
- Continue working on the outlines for Soul Reaper series.

What are your goals for September?

2017 Stats: 99,493 words written and 766,670 words edited

---

BOOKS READ AND REVIEWED

True Shifter by Christine Rains

The Hook Up by Tawna Fenske

SPECULATIVE FICTION BOOKS

RELEASING IN SEPTEMBER

Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King and Owen King

The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Redding: A Fiendish Arrangement by Alexandra Bracken

Nyxia by Scott Reintgen

Warcross by Marie Lu

Jane, Unlimited by Kristin Cashore

There’s Someone Inside Your House by Stephanie Perkins

The Han Agent by Amy Rogers

Fireblood by Elly Blake

Invictus by Ryan Graudin

Black Bird of the Gallows by Meg Kassel

Summoner by S.D. Grimm

Zero Point by Adam Quinn
One Dark Throne by Kendare Blake
Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor
Werebiker by Paige Cuccaro

Wednesday's Writing Update: August Stats and September Goals

 

Happy Wednesday!

First off, I would like to thank everyone who commented on my IWSG post last week. I have decided that Gravity: The Complete Trilogy will have everything and be published everywhere (well, as everywhere as I can get it in print and ebook formats) and the individual ebooks (Defying Gravity, Fighting Gravity, and Pull of Gravity) will have their individual epilogues added to them. I think around the holidays I will try to price match Defying Gravity to free as well. It's meant a lot of formatting, but it'll make things easier for readers and that's what is important.

I have August's stats. My editing was way up, but my writing was way down.

Total Pages Edited: 840

Total Word Count: 3460

Here are my September goals:

1. Get Gravity: The Complete Trilogy published in print and ebook formats. (Please see my announcement tomorrow!)

2. Upload the new versions of Defying Gravity, Fighting Gravity, and Pull of Gravity that include their respective epilogues. (Please see my announcement tomorrow!)

3. Re-publish Once Upon a December Nightmare, which will include the monster's origin short story "Nightmare at the Freak Show."

4. Write Nightmare Ever After, the sequel to Once Upon a December Nightmare.

5. Edit my YA Contemporary Romance novel Starred.

6. Outline Twelve Days of Foxwick.

If I can get that done, then I'll be on track to publish Nightmare Ever After in October before Halloween and perhaps will have a completely edited version of Starred to start querying publishers by the end of October.

Also, Jenn Nixon shared a teaser excerpt of Women of Foxwick on her blog yesterday, C.M. Brown featured Fighting Gravity for Teaser Tuesday on her blog, and I'm over at Rachelle Ayala's today talking about Pull of Gravity.

What are you working on? Do you have some September goals?

Wednesday's Writing Update: August Stats, September Goals, and a Blogger Award

Happy Wednesday!

August is finished and we're almost a full week into September. It's hard to believe this time next month I'll be in Richmond, VA for the James River Writers Conference.

So, on to August stats:

Submissions: 0

Rejections: 3

Acceptances: 0

Total Words: 15,115

Pages Edited: 601

I don't have many submissions out there, but I'm considering taking some of my shorter works and self-publishing them. In fact, I would like to write two and a half more short stories in my Foxwick land and created a small short story collection titled The Foxwick Chronicles: Women of Foxwick. So you might see this collection in December, if I can get everything together.

As for my novel Virtuoso, things aren't looking too good for it. There are major issues and I'm running out of time and energy to fix them right now. So starting last Friday, I began working on The Phoenix Prophetess. I'm completely in love with it. I've read it two times already and have started edits. It may be against my original plans, but I stand by my decision.

How is everyone else doing? Have you switched what you were working on for something you were more passionate about? How did that go?

 

Also, thank you Cher Green for giving me the Liebster Blog Award! 

The rules:

1. Thank the giver of the award and link back to them.

2. Give the Liebster to five bloggers and let them know with a comment to their blog.

3. Copy and paste the award onto your blog.

4. Have faith your followers will spread the love to other bloggers.

5. Have blogging fun!

I would like to give this award to:

Lisa Rusczyk – She doesn't blog too much, but she's pretty awesome. She works as an editor and has some new books out on Kindle. 

LindsayDuncan – She's a sweetheart and a harpist as well as a writer. 

ChristineRains – I know she's already received this award once, but she's one of my best friends and the reason I'm a writer. 

Jenn Nixon – She's an awesome romantic suspense writer and writes in other genres too. She's all about giving back and promoting authors on her blog. 

Bill Blume – He has an awesome blog with a comic strip he creates himself. I'm loving his steampunk one. Plus, he has the coolest stuffed animals.