Progress!

After a whirlwind November, I'm finally at a place where I can catch my breath just in time for the holidays. 

After doing NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) last year for the first time, I'd sworn I would never do it again. True, it had allowed me to complete my first draft of the next Zoe Chambers mystery, but I hadn't needed the "goal" number of 50,000 words to do that. 50K in 30 days is sheer madness. At least it is for my personal process. 

However, as I wrote back in June, I had abandoned a manuscript that wasn't selling to start something else. The Something Else hasn't sold either, and the characters from the first of those manuscripts were clambering to have their stories told. So I signed up for NaNoWriMo 2021 with abandoned manuscript #1 as my project. I'm thrilled to report that a.) I topped my 50K goal within the month of November and b.) I completed the rest of the first draft within the first week of December. Typing THE END is such a sweet moment for every writer. 


In the midst of NaNo, I received my first edits back on Fatal Reunion (Zoe Chambers #11). Celebration! They were minimal! Once my NaNo project was finished, I tackled those and sent the revised manuscript back to my editor. 

Two major projects off my plate for the moment!

That left my annual Christmas short story. 

In case you aren't aware, every Christmas Eve, I post a new short story on the Subscribers Only page of my website and send the password in my newsletter. The only way you can access the FREE short story is to be a subscriber. If you haven't signed up yet, go to my website and fill in your name and email. If you do it before this Christmas Eve, you'll still get the password for last year's story, which will be there until I replace it with the new one.


(If you've missed all the previous short stories, I've put them together as a collection titled Crime in the Country. It's available on Amazon for Kindle, Barnes & Noble for print and Nook, AND signed copies are available from Mystery Lovers Bookshop. You can also click HERE to find it on other ebook platforms.) 

So from now until the end of the month (YEAR!) I'm doing some minor rewriting on the NaNo project (mostly, I'm letting it sit and simmer a while) and catching up on my reading. Wishing you all a happy holiday season and some time to breathe and rest up as well. 

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