Thursday 18 July 2024: Announcement!

I had a bit of a slow, lazy start to the day yesterday. The temperature finally reached something close to ‘normal’ for summer and I thought it was too hot to take the dog out. We played ball in the garden for a bit while I picked up some windfall apples (not good enough to eat, yet, they went straight in the bin) and did a tiny bit of weeding. I took one look around at the work that really needs doing and went back inside.

There was good news anyway. I asked if the poet could come home yesterday as he was missing having a young dog in the house again, and he said yes he could! Especially as he had a few things he could be doing while he was up here too. He was close enough to go back this morning, but just too far to spend every day this week doing the drive. So he left his luggage at the hotel and cracked on with work so he wasn’t working overtime.

I got some home-made beefburgers from the butcher’s out of the freezer for tea (I was going to have an individual quiche lorraine) and decided to walk the dog in the evening. It would be cooler and the poet could come with me and help. The dog’s a young cocker spaniel and he’s full of energy.

Once at my desk, the first thing I did was proofread FIREWORKS AT KILLIECRANKIE while I ran my weekly tech scan. I submitted it and collected the next prompt, word-count (1,500) and deadline (14 August). I updated the 12 STORIES IN 12 MONTHS task on TickTick and created an empty one for September. I know what the deadline is, but everything else is blank for now.

While I was in TickTick I ended up moving a few things around and re-colour-coding the NEWSLETTER task as it was the same colour as NON-FICTION. I suppose it *is* non-fiction, but it was blending in with PROJECT MANAGEMENT FOR WRITERS and the OCD didn’t like it.

Announcement!
I’m restarting the newsletter in August, and the next one should be coming out during the second full week of August. We have a campervan touring holiday at the end of July and a trip to Ireland at the beginning of August, so I’ll save any pictures and stories for the newsletter rather than clutter the blog with them.
End of announcement!

I had another bit of a rant on FB about that competition I mentioned yesterday.

(“It’s bad enough that they grab all rights and pay very little for stories they buy. But to grab rights to stories they haven’t even paid for is disgraceful. But there are some who will still enter, just for the possibility of having a byline in a magazine. Vanity in the extreme, it really is – the writers are in effect paying the markets to *maybe* publish their work. And people wonder why I’m leaving all aspects of traditional publishing behind. People pay ME for my work, I don’t pay them for the privilege.”)

The friend I was replying to was of the same opinion, but the topic still makes my blood boil. Hands up everyone who can tell!

The PULPHOUSE Kickstarter hit all of its stretch goals well ahead of time, and was still climbing at the time of writing. I’m really pleased for them, as the money goes towards salaries, (professional rate!) short story fees, printing costs, etc. I was still umming and ahhing about backing it, but there were still 30-odd hours to go.

I chose an image for today’s blog post and grabbed the credit, then downloaded the image for tomorrow’s blog post and created my own credit. I took some pictures of Hawley to show you all tomorrow. And I requested a name change on my Facebook writing page, from writer and editor to freelance writer. I’m not taking in any new editing any more, so I thought I may as well change it. The change was approved instantly.

After dinner, I finally got around to Week 4 of the applied depth workshop. I’ve done really well with this, checking in every weekday. When I finish the depth bundle of courses, I should really set aside time to do the assignments. I wasn’t able to hand any in, otherwise I would have done the workshops in a more leisurely fashion. Once I’ve finished this bundle, I’ll decide what to do next.

We got 2 free books with Week 4 of this course. I already had one of them, but I don’t think I had the other. Even so, they’re still bonuses. I downloaded them and sent them to my Kindles everywhere.

I moved to the living room again, this time determined to get some work done on THE HAUNTED HOUSE HOTEL. I finally got around to finishing the pre-writing for Act 1, or the (currently) first 3 chapters/first 6 scenes. I still may convert the scenes to chapters, but I’ll still do that further down the road.

First of all I needed to do more work on the suspects and the victims. I didn’t really have anything to connect them, so I had to get creative and I came up with 2 lines of interest. I had to work out the relationships between them all and then I had to work out why Stevie would be talking to them prior to the first body drop.

Once I’d done all of that, and fleshed out some of the background info for them all, I outlined the first 3 chapters using the bullet points I’d already prepared. This pre-work has definitely given me a meatier storyline.

When the poet got home, he played with the dog for a bit, and then I broached the Tarot card subject. He agreed that tying the stories to the Tarot was too restrictive and I don’t know as much about the subject yet that others may do. So the Tarot cards are being dropped. Saying that, he still may create his own deck, just because it gives him practice for his art.

This means the covers now need to be done again, apart from the four aces, which I’m going to keep. And I’ll still have Stevie dabble, just to give her a bit of a hobby that ties her to her former life.

As the poet had come home for the day, I finished work. I finalised today’s blog post and scheduled it to publish and I updated my word-count spreadsheets. Now I have the background work done for Act 1, I’m keen to get on with it. But I do have other work to do as well today.