I had a feeling that my next update might be postponed due to the holidays. However, I thought it would be because I was too busy working – after all, the Holidays are shipping and deliver’s peak time – not because our second car died. You would think that would give me plenty of time to write and blog, but instead I found myself running as many errands as I could when I could, and then when my husband was off at work I was usually sitting on the couch like a bump on a log because I was tired from the aforementioned errand running. If I wasn’t a lump, then I was doing household chores or applying for working from home jobs.

Now that things have calmed down, I’m trying to get back into some sort of routine of making sure I set aside time to write, to dabble in my hobbies, to hang out with the kiddo and our pets, and still have that valuable zoning out on the couch to YouTube or Tik Tok.

We’ll see how long it lasts.

In writing news I haven’t made any progress on City of Ashes and Bone. An important character has just shown up in the story, and we have a chapter in her POV as she adjusts to life in the villa, and then it switches to Vivian’s POV as she deals with the aftermath of what she’s done. The next chapter is another inciting event (I’m not sure if there can be more than one inciting event in a story, but this one feels like it) and I feel like I need to have a chapter (or two) in between the previous chapters and that. I’m just not sure what it should be. But then I’m also tempted to just plug ahead, because the book is going to be long enough as it is, so does it really need more words? I mean, as much as my beta reader loves the intro chapters, I may have to cut them and turn it into a prologue short story.

The reason why I dwell on this so much is because I’m in the process of reading two books – one is Spare by Prince Harry and the other is The Name Bearer by Natalie Hernandez. Spare has way too much going on in it. There is a lot that the editors could have cut and it would have been fine. On the flip side of the coin, I feel like The Name Bearer isn’t long enough. There’s a lot of telling and not showing and I would have loved to see more of the character’s day to day lives. It’s hard for me to get sucked into books right now (I’ve DNFed more than I can count – not because it was a bad book, but because I just couldn’t get into the right headspace to focus) So when I find a book that drags me in, I get greedy and I want more. Thankfully the next Name Bearer book should be out later this year (or maybe next, I don’t have it with me and if I get up to check I’ll loose my seat to the cat…)

Anywho I’m trying to find a nice happy medium where the story is balanced perfectly and doesn’t build too abruptly (nobody likes an early climax) or take too long.

In the mean time I’ve started work on a new project – converting one of my fanfics into an original idea. I’ve shared snippets of it before, but since then it’s taken on it’s own life and I am at it’s mercy.

I have no idea if WIPpet Wednesday is still around. There’s a #wippetwednesday on Twitter, but I believe it’s run by different peopled, and the WIPpet Wednesday group on Facebook is dead. However, I really enjoyed it, so we’re just going to keep running with it even if I’m the only one still doing it.

As I’ve mentioned many times before, the trick about WIPpet Wednesday is that whatever you share has to have something to do with the date. So since today is the 18th of January, here are 18 words from my newest project.

The King of Annias was plotting something, but Archmage Kedalf Irongast had buried his head in the sand.

And that is all the news I have this week.

Until next time!