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26
Jun
2023

A World of Blurry Dilation, 2023 edition

(I used this title last year when I had my annual eye doctor appointment)

I had an eye doctor appointment this morning, and they dilated both eyes. This was at 8:30AM. It’s now 2:30PM and I can almost see. Almost.

Days like this tend to put me off my routine, which leaves me feeling off balance. I’m set in my ways, durn it. Exercising at the end of the day feels weird. But there’s not much to be done over it. First thing appointments are necessary when I’m not going to be able to see to drive myself home.

I’ve been working on Broken Feathers over the past week, and it’s been slow because I’ve been distracted. Remember last week, I mentioned going back to look at the old game posts? Over the past week, I went back and took a look at the first novels I wrote. The ones that I trunked because they were took darned much work to revise and my co-author on them didn’t have the spoons to work on them with me. (Same co-author as The Sea Prince, for the record.) I reached out to her and said “I’m thinking of tackling revisions on our boys once I finish The Sea Prince. How do you want me to handle this?”

Her response was “I’m in. When do we start?”

(A couple of you know which manuscripts I’m talking about, and I can hear you squeeing.)

Right now, the plan is to finish The Sea Prince, then get into revising the first two novels (which were one novel, and we split them. We may put them back together again. We’ll see.) So for right now, my work has been putting all the notes into a shared file, so that we can work on it together. And trying to keep myself from going in and rereading what we had because if I do that, I’m going to want to work on that first.

Patience… patience….

I did print out the synopses of the books we hadn’t written yet (or started), so I can start a series bible. Which totally won’t backfire and make me want to work on it now, nopenopenope….

Patience….

But, first things first. Finish the short story. Really. Finish it. Stop looking at the shiny thing. Leave it. LEAVE IT.

Posted by EASchechter in 2023 plans, 2024 plans, accountability, annoying-muse-is-annoying, Best laid plans, Best planned lays, Planning, publishing, queue, Revisions, The White Raven, the-end-is-near, upcoming work, 0 comments
13
Sep
2021

Down Time and Catching Up.

I’m taking a week or two to rest my brain before launching into Heir to the Firstborn: The Way Home. I actually haven’t even started on the edits for Crossroads yet — I figured I’d work on them at the table at Necronomicon, and shoot to have them done by mid-October. Which means that the on sale date for Crossroads will probably be December. Once I have that set, I’ll announce it.

I realized just now that I’ve been sitting on the cover for Crossroads, too.

Choices must be made. But choices have consequences.

Part of my brain break has been laying the groundwork for what I’ll be doing after I finish The Way Home (or while I’m working on it, depending on things.) I’ve written a synopsis for Blood Brothers (Flesh and Blood book 2), The Iron Virgin (that Pirate and Princess thing), and I’m working on the synopsis for Tower of Light (the gay steampunk retelling of Metropolis that I was challenged to write years ago by one of the best editors I ever had). I’m hoping to get the rest of the Flesh and Blood synopses done before Necro, but Tower of Light is going slowly — I’m having to be very conscious of matching the beats of Metropolis. So I may save Tower of Light to actually write until I have nothing else going on.

Stop laughing.

I’m also still working on RWA things. Pen to Paper is running, and my team is working on incorporating our development tester feedback into upcoming units. I’m tech support on call for our participants, and having a great time with that. I’m also working on another couple of projects that are still in the warm Jell-O stages, and won’t be solidified until after our first Board meeting, which will be… soon? Ish? I don’t have a date for that yet. So there is a lot in flux in that area.

Coming up on the end of third quarter also means starting to look at what I’ll be doing and publishing in 2022. Right now, I know for certain that I’ll be wrapping up Heir to the Firstborn, releasing a box set of the Swords of Charlemagne books (February 1st, 2022!), and I will be rereleasing the Rebel Mage books — I have all new covers for them. I haven’t set up a schedule yet for most things yet, but I will next quarter. I need to decide if I will be doing a box set for the Heir to the Firstborn books, but I’m not going to decide on that until I finish The Way Home. If I do put one out, it will be late 2022.  That’s the publishing that I have control over. I’m waiting to hear what’s happening with John Zebedee (it appears that the project may have been pushed back, but no official word yet), and with the myriad of things over with Riverdale Avenue Books.

And that’s about it for this week. Back to work!

 

 

Posted by EASchechter in 2021 plans, 2022 plans, accountability, Best laid plans, Best planned lays, Flesh and Blood, forthcoming works, Heir to the Firstborn, Necronomicon, Planning, presales, publishing, queue, Rebel Mage, Self-publishing, Swords of Charlemagne, Ta-da, The Iron Virgin, to-dos, Tower of Light, upcoming books, upcoming work, Worldbuilding, 0 comments
02
Mar
2020

Work in Progress: Bones of Earth

Bones of Earth
Heir to the Firstborn, Book 3

80744 / 95000 (84.99%)

I forgot to blog last week. Bad Liz. No Liz biscuit.

It’s been a busy couple of weeks. I can’t say much, other than… umm… BUSY! And no, it’s not writing related. Or RWA related.

Just… busy.

There’s been writing, though. And I’m starting to see the end to Bones of Earth. So I need to figure out what happens in Wings of Air, and quickly. So I’ll be getting on to that synopsis hopefully as soon as I finish my taxes. I’m going to go out on a limb and say Bones of Earth will be out in print in May or thereabouts.

After that, I have a few priorities:

  • Write Wings of Air
  • Write John Zebedee (due December)
  • Sell or otherwise publish Swords of Charlemagne.
  • Series plan for Flesh and Blood (the BDSM vampire series)
  • Figure out what will go on with the Patreon once I’m done with Heir to the Firstborn.

That last one may be me reviving one of the two things that I started and never finished. I think The Willow Sword might be the next Patreon serial. We’ll see, though. That one stalled out hard when I started writing it the first time. Maybe going back to it and rewriting it for serialization will fix whatever was broken.

And since there’s not much else to say, and I need to get myself moving, I’ll leave you with a tiny snippet from Bones of Earth that amused me to no end when I wrote it.

Owyn woke up. That surprised him enough that, for a long moment, all he could do was stare at the shadowed ceiling over him, marveling at the experience of just breathing. He’d woken up. That meant he was alive.

How the fuck had that happened?

Posted by EASchechter in 2020 plans, accountability, Adavar, BDSM Vampires, Bones of Earth, Elemental Project, Flesh and Blood, forthcoming works, Heir to the Firstborn, I really want some dull, John Zebedee, publishing, queue, Swords of Charlemagne, the-end-is-near, to-dos, upcoming books, upcoming work, Wings of Air, WIP, wordcount, 0 comments
28
Nov
2015

Putting ducks in a row

It’s been a while since I’ve done this. Like, well over a year. So I should put things on paper (err.. pixels) so that I have a checklist of what needs to be done in 2016

To Write:

    • Sins of the Father
    • Berlin  (Finish and retitle this) (Sable Locks, book 2)
    • The Willow Sword
    • Sea Prince

To Edit

    • Burden of Truth

To Outline

    • The Lady and the Sword (Mystere, Book 2)
    • Ashes and Light (Mystere, Book 3)
    • Tablets of Stone (Mystere Book 4)
    • Blood Bound
    • The Mentalist’s Cat
    • The White Raven
    • The Navigator (Steam and Screw, Book 1)
    • The Captain (Steam and Screw, Book 2)
    • Coral Throne (sequel to Sea Prince)
    • Rainbow Wars
    • Holy Orders (Sequel to Heart’s Master)
    • Men of Mortal Seeming (Sable Locks, book 3)

To Sell

    • Hidden Things
    • Holy Palmer’s Kiss
    • Sapphires and Gold
    • The Ice Raven
Posted by EASchechter in 2016 plans, Best laid plans, Best planned lays, queue, to-dos, 0 comments
25
Sep
2011

The Night To-Do List

And you can read that as either The Night Kitchen or The Night Circus (which I am very eager to read, but has to wait until I finish The Magician King. And yes, Catherine Valente was right when she said the Quentin still needed to be smacked out of the book.  I do like Julia, though.)

Heart’s Master is humming along nicely. I did almost 7000 words last week (6,999), which is good because I fell over with the flu Friday afternoon, and didn’t write a blessed word yesterday.  I tried to take a day off on Wednesday, and still wrote over 800 words. Which just goes to show I don’t write because I want to, I write because I HAVE to.

In any case, I’m almost ready to start posting chapters to the ERWA Storytime board for critique. That will wait, I think, until mid-November, though. Princes of Air comes out in just over a month, and I will be doing promo (which will probably be starting either October 1st or the 15th. Watch this space!) The week after the book comes out, I am slated to do an Livejournal author chat on the Circlet Press LJ.  So progress on Heart’s Master may just slow to a crawl.

So, on to the To-dos.

To Revise:

  • Nomad”s Moon (?) — Wait for response from small press

To Write:

  • Heart’s Master (used to be Drum Mage)
  • Playing For Keeps (short story to launch Tales from the Arena)
  • The Willow Sword
  • Sea Prince (To be written with Danielle Jones)
  • Wanderer’s Moon (next book in the Midnight Moon series. Not to be done until we sell Nomad’s Moon)

To Outline

  • Coral Throne (sequel to Sea Prince)
  • Hidden Things (Mystere Book 1)
  • The Lady and the Sword (Mystere Book 2)
  • Ashes and Light (Mystere Book 3)
  • Tablets of Stone (Mystere Book 4)
  • Rainbow Wars (the teach-in idea. Definitely a  YA. And it needs a better title)
  • Holy Orders ( Sequel to Heart’s Master)

To Sell

  • Nomad’s Moon
  • Exile’s Moon
  • Silk Skin (short story)
  • Infernal Machine (reprint, sent to Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica)
Posted by EASchechter in 2011 plans, Princes of Air, promotions, queue, Reading, Ta-da, to-dos, upcoming work, writing, 0 comments
28
Apr
2010

>Productive week.

>So, I’ve had a productive week so far, and it’s only Wednesday. A query for Nomad’s Moon went off to Immanion Press. Infernal Machine is done, and went off to the beta readers two days ago. And I’ve almost finished revising Prince of Air. The initial revision that removed the sex scenes and attempted to make it a mainstream fantasy story was a mistake. I know that now. Putting the sex back is making it a better story again. Maybe now I can sell it.

Very productive. Now to sell the finished works.

The updated queue:

To Write:

* Haunts (Shadow Unit story, in progress)
* House of Sable Locks (novel, in progress)
* Wanderer’s Moon (next book in the Midnight Moon series. Currently on hold.)
* Drum Mage
* Professional virgin story (no title as of yet)
* Wandering star story

To Revise

* Prince of Air

To Outline

* Sea Prince (outline in progress)
* Coral Throne
* Hidden Things

To Sell

* Nomad’s Moon
* Exile’s Moon
* Infernal Machine

Originally posted at http://elizabethschechter.blogspot.com/. Comments welcome here or there.
Posted by EASchechter in queue, writing, 0 comments