To Write, or Not to Write: An IWSG Post

This time of year is always extremely frustrating and stressful for me because it’s non-stop stuff that has to be done. I have to get numerous tasks out of the way before winter hits. I have to make my daughter’s (and sometimes my husband’s) Halloween costumes. I have to start cleaning for the upcoming holidays, not to mention shop…a lot. There’s chores and work, and tasks concerning my daughter’s school. These days there’s also YouTube and all that having a channel entails.

And then National Novel Writing Month comes around, and it’s like, “God DAMMIT, why couldn’t Chris Baty have decided to create this challenge in, like, March?

I’m having a hard time deciding whether or not I’m going to do NaNoWriMo this year. I’ve gotten so busy, between my work, and YouTube and all the other random stuff that comes with accursed adulthood, that it’s been months since I wrote more than 10k in 30 days, never mind writing 50k in the same amount of time. And I know that NaNo is as much about having a reason to write as it is completing the goal, but I really really don’t like not completing the goal. Last year I competed and lost, and while I still managed to write a nice number of words, it felt frustrating losing the challenge.

And honestly, that’s where I’m going to leave it for today, because I already got a bunch of whining and moaning out in yesterday’s “Goals in Review” post, and I don’t think it really needs repeating. 😛

How are you guys feeling about NaNoWriMo 2016?

November 2015 Goals in Review

Phew! Is it seriously December already? Well that’s just insanity, that’s what I think. November really got away from me there, but it’s all good because I’m not going back to work now until the New Year. Go me! ^_^

And on that cheery note, let’s take a quick look at how November treated me, shall we?

Goal #1: Take care of myself more.

Ha ha ha ha ha…oh man…wait, that wasn’t a joke? Oh, gee, sorry.

November seemed to happen so fast that it’s not surprising that I didn’t really find the time to “take care of myself”, exactly. That’s not to say that I was overly hard on myself, but there were definitely a few too many fast food meals, too few relaxing moments, and more than a little “Oh crap, Christmas is coming fast” stress.

All in all though, I can’t really say a whole lot about this topic simply because November disappeared on me so quickly that I hardly even noticed that I wasn’t really taking care of myself. So I guess we’ll just call it a wash? Ha ha…hopefully I’ll find some time for a few hot baths and maybe a massage during December.

Goal #2. Continue to build my readership/viewership.

Okay, I was going to laugh again, but I’ll restrain myself this time.

The truth is that I did do a few things toward this goal this month, although most of it was a bit unintentional. I, for instance, filmed a couple of videos that people really seemed to like, and therefore I had a nice little spike in YouTube followers. My rants about Hot Topic and the GameStop Black Friday Funko box also brought a number of new people to the blog, so that was pretty nice. I was also contacted by a few different companies wanting me to try out their product in return for a fair review on YouTube, which was very nice, although one of those companies has yet to actually send me the product, so I’m not sure if that one is actually going to happen.

On the book sales side of things, there is literally nothing to report because there haven’t been any sales. Not one book or e-book since October. That’s a little bit of a kick in the gut, but it’s softened by the fact that I got two new really nice reviews on the book, and one of those reviews was posted on three different sites. So that’s pretty nice, and definitely brightened my day when I saw them.

Goal #3: Write. Write a lot.

And so we come to the writing and the real question of the month…how did NaNoWriMo go? Well, it’s a bit of a mixed bag, just like last year. I did not, in fact, complete NaNo, which makes me more than a little bit sad, but I’m also okay with it because I gave up the chance in order to get important things done (like working on my daughter’s birthday plans and Christmas shopping and the like). I really, really hoped that I would be able to squeeze the words in this year, and I was actually doing good, but it all came to a grinding halt around the 23rd. I was flying home from my shift, and since I’m off for the entire month of December I ended up having a few drinks with my coworkers at the airport, since I won’t see them for two months. Then I flew all night and all day, trying my best to get some sleep in on the way, and almost immediately after getting home I dove into the big pre-decorating clean, Black Friday shopping, tree-trimming, and so on, and I just didn’t really find any time at all to sit down and write.

That said, I’m not too disappointed in myself because I wound up with over 40,000 words throughout the month. I don’t have the exact number on me right now because I kept forgetting to update my spreadsheet as well as the NaNo page, but I know for a fact that it’s over 40,000 and that’s double what I wrote on my most productive months previously in the year. Not too shabby at all, and I’ve got lots of interesting scenes laid out for when I get the chance to sit down and really think about what I want to do with this Fairy Tales idea. So, all in all, I can’t say that it wasn’t an excellent month.

How was your November? If you participated in NaNoWriMo did you manage to cross the finish line? Did you get anything else accomplished? Are you excited for the holidays? Please share! ^_^

When it Rains, it Pours, but, You Know…Rainbows and All That (An IWSG Post)

This post is going up a lot later in the day that I usually put up my posts, and that’s very in tune with the sort of time I’ve been having lately. Let’s go through a quick list, shall we?

• Around the middle of September I had to suck it up and purchase a new vehicle. It wasn’t because the old one had crapped out on me, but rather because my daughter started school. Because of my work schedule (two weeks on the other side of the country, then two weeks home) and the fact that all my flights leave at “you’ve got to be kidding” o’clock in the morning, we became in need of two vehicles so that my daughter wouldn’t miss school every single time I flew. So that was the starting point…handing over fistfuls of cash for a very large purchase.
• Around the same time we bought the new car, I had started working on my daughter’s Halloween costume, which I make myself every year. But because, again, of my work schedule, I was not able to finish back then and had to go two weeks (16 days when you count the days of flight) without being able to work on it…keep this in mind for a few moments.
• Then, while I was on shift at work, our washing machine crapped out completely. My husband tried his best to get it up and running again, but it turned out that the required part was the most expensive one, making it pretty much pointless. And since our dryer was just as old as the washer, it didn’t make a lot of sense to get just a washing machine and then just be waiting for the dryer to die…so we ended up buying a brand new washer and dryer set, and although it’s not like we couldn’t afford it, it always sucks to have to make purchases like that so suddenly.
• So I got home, and I had precisely four days to finish my daughter’s costume, along with helping my husband go crazy decorating the house, because we do Halloween right in this family. It was an extremely busy few days, which is always a little stressful.
• Of course, after Halloween we did our traditional drive around to look for discounted candy, costumes, and decorations…and while we were out a big truck flung a rock at our windshield, putting an enormous crack in it. We were driving the brand new car. To make matters even worse, my insurance deductible is enormous, so it actually cost less to pay for it out of pocket, and it hasn’t even been fixed yet because the part that Speedy ordered arrived damaged.
• So now I’ve only got a few more days before I head back out to work, and once I come home again it’s not only my daughter’s birthday, but I’ve got to get all of the Christmas stuff done in those two weeks because the next time I’ll be home after that won’t be until December 19th.

The point of all this? Just that this is a stressful time of the year for me, and it’s not going to be over for quite a while yet.

The upside? Well, there’s always writing.

This time of year – specifically, November – is National Novel Writing Month, and even when I’m stressed out and busier than I can possibly deal with, I always have fun during National Novel Writing Month.

This year I’m doing something purely for fun, not worrying about epic plots or anything like that. I’m writing a series of short, erotic stories based on fairy- and folk-tales. It’s silly, strange, probably reads like the worst drivel you can imagine, and it’s a ton of fun. In fact, I’ve written almost as much in the past four days as I wrote during all of October.

Sometimes it can be hard to remember when you’re trying to create a masterpiece, but writing should be fun. It should be relaxing, and a release from reality, and you should enjoy doing it. So maybe, just maybe, when things are getting out of control and it feels like your brain is about to explode, maybe you should just sit down and write some really raunchy sex scenes.

Or, you know, whatever kinds of scenes are fun for you to write. XD

And with that said, it’s time to get back to my dirty scenes…and I’m telling all of you fellow IWSG writers to do the same! Get out there and write whatever makes you happy! Do it now! ^_^

NaNo Ahoy! (And a Reminder for November’s Posts and “Goals Review”)

Ahoy fellow writers (and lovely readers)! It’s November 2nd, which means that NaNoWriMo 2015 is on it’s way! November 1st is always a bit difficult for me because we do Halloween pretty big in my family, and we also usually go out shopping and scouring for discounted Halloween stuff the next day… BUT, I did managed to write almost 1700 words last night, which puts me right on track for the beginning of the challenge! Hopefully I can get a little bit ahead today and we’ll really be rolling!

But the real reason for this post is to remind you all that I plan to take it easy on the blog this month. The point, of course, is mainly to be able to focus on NaNo, because life is busy and I do hope to actually complete the challenge this year. So the first post I’ll be skipping is my monthly goals review post. I’ll just tell you quickly that I haven’t been taking very good care of myself, and that I wrote 11,161 words in October. BAM, you’re updated. XD

There won’t, however, be NO activity on the blog this month. I do still plan to do the Insecure Writers Support Group post this Wednesday, and I will be doing “unboxing and review” posts throughout the month to coordinate with YouTube videos that I’ll hopefully be posting over the next couple of weeks…I have a ton of unboxings to do this month, so I can’t possibly let those slide while I’m doing NaNo.

But that’s it! Other than that it’s all about the writing! So with that in mind, leave me alone you guys! I need to be writing! D:

Ready, Set, Write!

It’s very nearly that time of the year, ladies and gentlemen. No, not Christmas, although that has been sneaking up on me like a predator ready to pounce. I’m actually talking about National Novel Writing Month, better known as NaNoWriMo.

If you don’t know what NaNoWriMo is, at its core it is a challenge: a challenge to write (at least) 50,000 words in one month, starting November 1st and ending November 30th. The unwritten rules are that you start a brand new story on that first day and that by the end of it you aim to have a complete novel, even if it’s so bad it would take holy fire to properly edit and revise it and make it readable. The reality is that lots of people also write multiple short stories, or continue on with stories they’ve already been working on; some people even write things like autobiographies, scripts, or collections of poems. There are really no hard-and-fast rules, other than the goal: write 50,000 words in 30 days.

I’ve taken part in NaNoWriMo every year since I first discovered it, even the years during which I knew I had little to no chance of completing the task, and it’s been worth it every time.

November 2010
This is the year I first stumbled across a blogger talking about NaNoWriMo. I looked into it, found the website, and immediately fell in love with the idea. Even though I was almost late to the game (it was late October when I found out about it) I decided that I just had to take part. I’d been thinking about playing my hand at writing a zombie story, so that’s what I did, and the first draft of “Nowhere to Hide” was born. That year was my first NaNoWriMo win, with approximately 50,700 words. I came in right under the wire, and although my story was a bit messy and uncoordinated I was very proud because it was the first time I’d ever written a full-length novel start-to-finish. It was my first ever completed manuscript.

November 2011
After the fun I’d had the previous year of course I was going to try NaNoWriMo out again! This time I decided to go for something completely different from what I’m used to: sci-fi. The story was “Erased”, and it featured a cast of strange characters who find themselves abandoned in what appears to be a medical facility on a planet with two moons. I had fun in the beginning, but around the middle of NaNo I was beginning to wear, with no idea of where the story was going and a lack of faith in myself to properly write a technologically-advanced world. Eventually I wound up cheating by putting “Erased” aside and writing new scenes for other stories I was working on. Though I technically rebelled against the “rules”, I did still manage to write 57,300 words that year, so I still call it a win!

November 2012
My third NaNo was my first loss in the challenge, which is funny since what I was actually doing was a rewrite of a story I’d been writing on and off for years, “Parallels”. The fact that I already had a great deal of the story ingrained into my brain didn’t help; I was simply too busy that year and didn’t have enough motivation. Still, I enjoyed taking part in the challenge and managed to write about 37,200 words that month.

November 2013
On the fourth year I tried something different yet again. While I’d already taken a shot at horror, this would be my first time writing about vampires. I wanted to write something fun that was aimed at teens and young adults, but that was actually frightening. “Bloodlust” was the story of a girl and her friends seeking out vampires because the world’s literature had lead them to believe that they were wonderful creatures, when in fact they are the monsters people once took them to be. I had high-hopes for this story, but it never really worked out in my head and I ended up abandoning it, though not before I won another NaNo with just over 50,100 words.

November 2014
Last year I didn’t have a whole lot of hope for my chances with NaNo, but I wanted to take part anyway because hey, I didn’t want to break the streak! It was my fifth year and I had a plan. I’d still been writing “Parallels” on and off throughout the years, but I’d recently decided that the story would make a much better mini-series…say, three-to-four shorter books instead of one insufferably long one. So for NaNo ’14 I decided to write that first book: “The Other World: Book One”. I ended up experiencing my worst NaNo failure yet with only about 31,900 words, but it was a huge start toward that first book (which I’m now in the process of revising) and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that!

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So that leads us back here, to the impending NaNo 2015. I’m excited to participate again, although I know there’s a fair chance that it will be another loss to add to the board, because even when things don’t go my way I still gain something out of NaNo. It’s always my most productive writing month of the year, and I feel that has a lot to do with the community and the fun atmosphere that the challenge provides. It’s not just buckling down and forcing yourself to write…it’s almost a sort of game that you’re playing with thousands of people all over the world.

This year I’m trying something way out in left-field from what I’ve done previously. I’m going to be “cheating” by writing a number of shorter stories, and they’re all going to be of the erotic variety. I’ve been toying with the idea of trying my hand at the genre for a while, and I figured what better time than NaNo, when you’re forced to write quickly and without thinking too hard or looking back? If absolutely nothing else I should get a good laugh out of the whole thing, especially since I’ve decided to base my little erotica series on fairy tales (the #1 rule of erotica, apparently, is to find a kink – or theme – and stick to it, and I figured this was something I know enough about to be able to handle).

As it has been for the past few years, this NaNo will not be an easy go for me (not that it ever is). I have a few days at home during the first week of the challenge, but then I travel out West and am tortured with 12-hour work days for 14 days straight before returning home again. For this reason I’ve decided to take a bit of a break from my blog during November so that I can focus my writing exclusively on the challenge. I’ll still write something for “Insecure Writer’s Support Group” day, and I’ll still whip up the “unboxing and review” posts for the subscription boxes I have waiting for me at home as we speak, but that will be it. I’ve been meaning to take a break from the blog for a while, so I figure this is definitely the right time, don’t you think? I’ll mention this again once or twice so no one thinks I’ve disappeared or anything. 🙂

So, I guess that’s it! I’m anxiously awaiting the beginning of the challenge and curious to know how I’m going to make out this year. Is anyone else taking the plunge into NaNo-World this year? What are you writing about? What are you planning to do with your novel after you write it? Want to be writing buddies? My username is Toreshi! Hope to see you there! ❤

Looking on the Bright Side – An IWSG Post

Well, it’s once again time for the “Insecure Writer’s Support Group” post of the month, and though I’m having what I consider to be a pretty rotten morning so far I’m going to try really really hard to keep a positive light to this month’s post.

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First thing to be happy about: a couple of weeks ago those of us who are participating in the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Challenge got our results back from the first challenge. The way it works is that in each group (which has about 30 people), the top fifteen stories get points, and you get as many points as your rank. So the top ranking story would get fifteen points, and the lowest ranking story would get one point, with the remaining fifteen people getting zero points. For my first story of the challenge I got ten points, which I think is pretty great, especially considering that it’s my first time ever participating in the challenge. 🙂

The second part of the challenge was about a week and a half ago, so I won’t get the results back for that one until October 20th-ish. Once those points are doled out the top six scorers in each group move on to Round Two. I’m not expecting to get into Round Two because my second challenge story wasn’t nearly as good as the first one, but it’s still been tons of fun and I’ve gotten lots of great feedback from fellow participants, so it was definitely worth it.

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Second thing to be happy about: the Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book competition is coming to a close very soon. Why is that something to be happy about? Because it’s been KILLING me waiting for it! To enter the competition you had to send them a hard-copy of your novel way back in March/April, so I’ve just been sitting around waiting for the results since then. I’m not expecting to place at all – after all, I’m sure there were probably hundreds of entrants all with amazing books – but I’m excited for it to be over because even the losers get feedback from the judges on their novel. Plus it’ll just be nice to not be anticipating it anymore! Only five more days until “all winners will be notified”, so soon I’ll be able to breathe a sigh of relief and know that it’s officially over and I don’t have to think about it. XD

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Third thing to be happy about: although it’s actually taken longer than I expected it to because my life is a ball of “go here, do this, do that”, I am almost done of the current draft of “The Other World: Book One”. That means that I can ship the manuscript off to my beta-reader and not have to think about it again until she ships it back with her thoughts. This is definitely a good thing because I’ve reached that stage in every story where you just want to set your laptop on fire rather than have to re-read the same paragraphs one single more time.

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Fourth thing to be happy about: NaNo season is approaching. Honestly, even though I love NaNoWriMo, I’m usually filled with dread at this time of year because it’s just such a god-damn busy time and I’m usually so stressed out and there’s absolutely no way that I can find the time required to write 50,000 words in one month. HOWEVER, this NaNo I’ve decided to totally rebel and do something fun and kinda-sorta-in-a-way relaxing. I’ve been toying with the idea of writing an erotic novel or two, mostly for research purposes (no, seriously), to see how such a thing would sell in comparison to my zombie novel, “Nowhere to Hide“. So, this year for NaNo I’m going to rebel and just write 50,000 words worth of erotic stories. My understanding is that the average erotic story is 5000-7000 words, so I’m going to try to write 8-10 short stories. I think it’ll be an interesting change from the usual system since, generally, by mid-way through NaNo I’m both losing interest in my story and wondering how I’m going to stretch it out to 50,000 words. With what I’m going to do this year if I lose interest I can just skip to one of the other stories in the line. Yeah, okay, technically it’s cheating, but the NaNo forums have a “Rebels” board for a reason, right. ^_~

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So I guess that’s basically it for now. I’m just trying really hard to look on the bright side of things, because otherwise my eye starts twitching and I start grinding my teeth and not sleeping well, and it’s just overall a really bad scene. 😛

So what about you guys? What are you all up to? Looking on the bright side, right? RIGHT?

Accountability Wednesdays: Week 45

Ladies and gentlement, we are a week and a half into National Novel Writing Month, and I am exhibiting signs of writing insanity and breakdown! I am getting constant comments from coworkers on how I can possibly write so much by hand and not be in horrible pain. And then, on “Double Up” day (when you are encouraged to double your word count for the day), I wrote so much that I genuinely was in a great deal of pain (luckily it felt better by the next morning). Today my pen started to act up, and upon examination I had run it completely dry…the same pen that I had pulled fresh from the pack less than five days prior! And now I’m getting into the giddy multiple-personality stage of the game, wherein one voice is screaming at me about how horrible the story is, and the other is screaming that editing is for December. My GOD, do I love NaNoWriMo!

But I digress. Let’s get this accountability nonsense out of the way, shall we?

Goal #1. Lose ten pounds and become healthier overall.

Let’s not mince words here, people. This goal means nothing to me at the moment. How can I think about weight loss when I’m trying to HANDwrite almost 2000 words per day (whilst simultaneously working 12 hours a day)? I can’t, that’s how! Then again, all this writing has been distracting me from eating maybe there’s something to be had there…

Anyway, the real important thing is that the meds my doctor gave me seem to be helping quite a bit. There’s still an anxiousness factor that I can’t seem to get past, but hopefully as time goes on and I have fewer issues, the anxiousness will abate. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Goal #2: Be more active on social media, and work harder on my author platform.

Man, I have been ALL over Twitter this week. I’m just sayin’. Mostly that’s been because I’ve been hanging out and chatting with the #NaNoWriMo crowd, but that’s all good. It’s been keeping me (somewhat) sane through all the writing sprints.

In future news, I have my first ever Influenster Vox Box waiting for me when I get home next week, and I should also have my second ever BzzAgent campaign box waiting for me by then as well, so look forward to some fun! The Vox Box has a game for my daughter to play, so that should be tons of fun!

Goal #3: COMPLETE my zombie apocalypse novel, Nowhere to Hide.

Nope, still not tired of reporting the completion of this goal. Bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

On an unrelated note, buy my book! 😀

Goal #4: Write 500,000 words.

Obviously I’ve gone a little wacky this week, and it’s mostly the symptom of this goal, exaccerbated by NaNoWriMo. I have been writing like the wind, killing my wrist, and putting together a manuscript that I really hope I will be able to make something off in the months following NaNoWriMo. If I were able to write by laptop (since I’m out at work I am severely limited in what I can accomplish) I would probably have twice the word count, but I am happy to report that as of your reading this I have already written 18,598 words for NaNoWriMo so far. Now, not all of those words were this week, but if you tack on the words I wrote for recent blog posts it makes this week’s total 16,723. And remember, the overwhelming majority of that was BY HAND. I’m going to be crippled by the time I get home to my laptop, but I’ll have one hell of a notebook to bring with me.

And with that all said, I need to lay my head down for a moment and “rest my eyes”. If you hear snoring, don’t worry, it’s just, um…the gears in my head turning. Yeah, let’s go with that.

Accountability Wednesdays: Week 42

Man. Just, yeah….man. By the time you guys read this I hope I will have managed to have a really good night’s sleep, because at the time of writing it I am so exhausted that I literally started falling asleep while I was eating my lunch. Literally. While eating.

Unfortunately I am (once again) writing this post from the Halifax airport, as my flights were amazingly screwed up for the fourth time in the past five months. It wasn’t anyone’s fault (there was a malfunction in one of the engines on the plane I was taking out of Calgary, and the delay caused me to miss my layover to get home), but it doesn’t make the situation any less tiring and frustrating. But I’ll try not to let my fatigue affect this post. Starting now. 😛

Goal #1: Lose ten pounds and become healthier overall.

Last week I told you that I’d been having stomach problems again. This week I’m going to tell you that I’ve probably lost some weight, but not for a good reason. Since my stomach problems started last week I’ve been having an awful hard time getting a decent amount of food into me. It’s like my body has decided it has an aversion to eating. I could be starving half to death, but as soon as I start trying to put food in my mouth it’s like my body flips around and says, “Wooooahh, buddy. What do you think you’re doing there?” Clearly this is not a good thing, even if I did lose a couple of pounds as a result. Luckily I’m going to see my doctor later today, so hopefully something will come of that. I’m pretty much ready to offer him an ultimatum, because going to and from work every day during my shift has become an exercise in surviving cruel and unusual punishment.

Also, I’d like to add, it is definitely some kind of inhuman torture to make people spend two hours a day sitting on a bus that doesn’t have a toilet. People in charge of the buses at work; you know who you are, and you’re evil.

Goal #2: Be more active on social media and work hard on my author platform.

Things slowed down a little this week, mostly because I’ve been tired, and partly because I didn’t want to overdo marketing the book. So there’s not much to report.

Goal #3: COMPLETE my zombie apocalypse novel, Nowhere to Hide.

Still done! I can totally screw up the other three goals, but you can’t take this one away from me! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Goal #4: Write 500,000 words.

This week was definitely better than the past two, mostly because I’ve been rushing to prepare the blog for NaNoWriMo time. Also, as of the writing of this post I’ve been sitting in the airport for six hours, so I had to pass the time somehow. Anyway, what with the planning and scheduling and so on and so forth, I managed to end up with 8519 words this week. My total for the year still isn’t even half of the total goal, and I’m definitely suspecting that I’m not going to finish this goal again this year, but I do also have high hopes for NaNo, so we shall see.

Until next time!

It’s Coming…

It’s almost that time of the year again… No, I’m not talking about Halloween (yet), and I’m definitely not talking about Christmas (yet). No, I’m talking about the most wonderful/hateful time of the year for writers: National Novel Writing Month.

For those who don’t know, NaNoWriMo (as we like to call it) is a yearly event that occurs in November and challenges writers of every age from all over the world to write a novel (of at least 50,000 words) in 30 days. I have been participating since 2008 and I absolutely love it. It’s a huge motivation boost (who doesn’t love completing a challenge?) and the writer community on the website is absolutely amazing. I’ve met some truly awesome people through NaNo, gotten a ton of writing done, and had loads of fun in the process. And, in fact, my zombie apocalypse novel, “Nowhere to Hide“, first saw life as a NaNo novel. Amazing things happen during NaNo, which is why I will continue to participate as long as I continue to write!

This year for NaNo I’m planning to work on a project that I’ve been dying to get to for months now. I’ve mentioned before that there’s a fantasy adventure story that I’ve been working on (on and off) for pretty well a decade now. Well, it’s about time that I turn this labor of love into something worth printing. The original story (which I never managed to complete) was a single book, but not too long ago it occurred to me that the layout of the story makes way more sense as a series. So this year for NaNoWriMo I’m starting the adventure of an entire overhaul and rewrite. My novel for 2014 will be book one of a series henceforth known as “The Other World”.

But that’s not the only important thing to note about NaNoWriMo. Understandably, taking on the NaNo challenge means sacrificing a lot of time and energy, which makes it more difficult to get other things done…things like, say, blogging, for example. So while I’ve still got a bit of time on my hands, I hope to plan and schedule my posts for the month of November. This, however, requires an idea as to what to (pre)blog about for all those days. So…what shall I do?

Well, I think it’s about time to finally break out “642 Things to Write About“, don’t you? So here’s the plan: for the month of November, four days a week, you will be treated to my interpretation of some of the aforementioned 642 things (the fifth day will be Accountability Wednesday, during which I’ll give updates on how NaNo is going).

So, in conclusion, November will be a month to complete randomness, a la “642 Things to Write About“, and will hopefully conclude with a (mostly) written new manuscript. Sound good? Alright, it’s a date!

Accountability Wednesdays: Week 40

It’s that time of the week again, and while I don’t have much to report on the other three goals, those of you who saw my post on Monday know that there’s big news on one of them! So let’s just get right down to it…

Goal #1: Lose ten pounds and become healthier overall.

Well, I can tell you that before I flew back out West two days ago I was holding steady at 4 lbs lost, and I’m highly doubtful that I’m going to lose six more in the twelve weeks I have left in this year. But I guess we shall see. I haven’t been eating too poorly of late, but I haven’t been devoting any time to my health either because, to be blunt, I’ve been focusing on other things that are more important to me right now. That’s a good excuse, right? Well, maybe not, but that’s what I’m going with anyway.

Goal #2: Be more active on social media and work hard on my author platform.

There has been a definite bump in my social media activity this week, for reasons that shall be discussed in a moment. Aside from the obvious, though, I also recently received an opportunity from BzzAgent because of my social media activity, which is pretty cool. If you’re curious about it, check out this vid and keep your eyes open for my campaign contributions over the next few days!

Goal #3: COMPLETE my zombie apocalypse novel, Nowhere to Hide.

This is the big news, in case you missed it! This goal is 100% complete! Nowhere to Hide is now published and available for sale on Amazon, Kindle, and the CreateSpace.com e-store!

Check out the physical copy on Amazon.com to get a $1 discount off the cover price of $9.99. If you’d prefer the cheaper e-book version, remember that you don’t need to have a Kindle device to get it! You just need to download the free Kindle app on your iOS or Android device, and then you can order the e-book for $2.99.

If you do decide to pick up the book, please remember to return to Amazon or Kindle afterward and leave a review! Promotion is very important and I’m at the most difficult stage of that right now, so any help is deeply appreciated.

Goal #4: Write 500,000 words.

The past week was another slow one because I was focused on the whole self-publishing thing. I ended the week with approximately 2000 words. But the good news is that now that Nowhere to Hide is done, I can once again focus on writing new stuff. So with NaNoWriMo coming up in less than a month, my plan moving forward is to get as much blogging planned out as possible between now and Halloween, and then totally kill NaNo with my second novel, which will be the first in a fantasy YA series. Wish me luck!