CM Simpson: Writer & Gamer

There was not a lot of writing progress, during May, but that is my own fault, as I allowed the publishing pile to build up, and also did some work on my on-line presence. Last week's progress was as follows:   Progress: May, 2018 New words produced: 54,065 Outlines and Notes: 14,689 Words compiled: 0 Works completed: 0 Works edited: 3 ( Mack ‘n’ Me: Blaedergil's Host, The Dear Tiger Omnibus , Harper's Choice ) Covers created: 2 ( Rocky & the Raptors , Harper’s Choice ) Works formatted: 5 ( Destiny’s Queen , Rocky & the Raptors , Mack ‘n’ Me: Blaedergil’s Host, The Dear Tiger Omnibus , Harper’s Choice ) Works published: 4 ( Destiny’s Queen , Rocky & the Raptors , Mack ‘n’ Me: Blaedergil’s Host, The Dear Tiger Omnibus ) Works released: 4 ( Destiny’s Queen , Rocky & the Raptors , Mack ‘n’ Me: Blaedergil’s Host, The Dear Tiger Omnibus ) Works submitted: 0 Competit

Four weeks ago , I set a couple of goals: write 4k/day, improve my outlining, and catch up with my publishing schedule, or something like that. Results: 4k was successfully written, every day, and all on the one project - M3 is now over half-way complete at 47,215 words. My outlining improved, and I now have a 'fullish' idea of what is going to happen next, as well as a skeletal, dot-point run to the end of the novel. I published my next two releases, both short works and both with enough time to spare to go onto a pre-release schedule with Amazon and Smashwords, and I started the editing process on M2, which is a full 91k novel due out in a fortnight - what can I say? I hurt my back and fell behind. The long-term goal is to take some of that pressure off by working to being pre-released 3 months in advance, but sshhh, that's one of those behind-the-scenes things I work towards, even if it takes a long time to get there. What did I learn? That outlines help -

Just sliding by to show you the cover for my next release, Harper's Choice , an urban-fantasy science-fiction short story set in the Pixie Dust world.This story is the first to feature Harper and Remy, but I don't think it will be the last. “The world turns differently for each of us, and we have no choice but to take its hand and dance the next set of steps.” (Argyllis, 2017) Harper disagreed. Rescuing pixies from drug-runners, and working alongside unicorns and elves was part of her job. The world had turned, and she had chosen, but, when she is badly injured and taken into the elven realms, Harper finds she has a whole new set of steps to choose—and that time, indeed, moves differently in the Other World.

Last week, I ran across a couple of short-story submission opportunities - and I also had an omnibus to release. The initial time budget was a day for each short story, two days to finalise the release format, and three days to add words to the chapter book that decided to become a novel, and the next novel in the Mack 'n' Me 'n' Odyssey series. Well, that was a bust. The first short story refused to cooperate. Point blank. Nuh uh. No way. No how. I wrestled 3,000 words into it, and then worked out I'd written the beginning wrong. That took three days. During that time, I took a lot of breaks so I could think out what to do next, and I made sure not to waste the time. I updated the titles missing from Kobo, reformatted a couple of Smashwords titles, and got my Pinterest boards up to date. I even went for walks, and did household tasks. And NONE of it worked... until I worked out, and accepted, the story needed a total rewrite. After that, it was two days to co