This is now the third time I’ve tried to write this post. Third time is the charm, right? How about we start off with this:

Happy Labor Day.

Goodbye summer of 2017. Let’s not do that again.

While I’ll be glad for a reprieve from the yard work which I haven’t been diligent about this summer, I’m certainly not ready for the steadily approaching winter either. I’m not much of a fan of ice and snow. Maybe this winter will be a mellow one. Keep the snow in the mountains. Yeah, don’t want to think about that either. Moving on.

Last week wasn’t a very productive writing week. Certainly not as much as I had hoped. Oh well, some weeks are like that. I’m hoping the next four months can be very focused and productive.

By the end of the year, I really hope to have Stardust and The Three Books out in audio, as well as the 6th Loki novella (tentatively titled: Mischief on Wheels), Prince of the Ruined Land (Sacred Knight #4), Ninjas: Space Ninjas Aren’t Real (which I’m posting the cover below — I did get that done this week), Mystery of the Stardust Monk (yes, it goes along with Stardust), and hopefully Onesong (which I’m currently running on my free Wednesday blog). Oxygen is all ready to go and I will be slating a date for it this week. I had planned on putting it into KDP Select like Fall’s Confession, but that has been such an epic failure that I might just nix that plan and go wide with them all as I have been.

Into next year, I have planned a romance which I’m calling Siva right now because that’s the name of my main character and nothing else has come to mind. I’m not even liking her name, but that’s what my voice recorder (I’m dictating this whole book so far) decided to call her, so I stuck with it. I think I was trying for something more along the lines of Shieva, just a slight difference from the Indian goddess, Shiva, so it might get changed when I go back through it. Thank goodness for search and replace.

I also have Dragons of Wellsdeep that’s coming along nicely, so look forward to that in 2018 — you can read through some of the pages on my Better Writer Blog. That’s another project I want to get started again. I’ve been thinking and compiling posts. I’m really hoping that as I get into next quarter, I can do that. But I might wait as I have another idea (one of a podcast) which I’d like to get going on. I’d love to do both projects, but there is only so much time right now. And, at this point, I’d rather be writing my books — that serves me best for the moment.

Oh, and also slated for 2018 is the 7th Loki novella and the 5th Sacred Knight. I’m hoping two more Ninja origin stories will come out next year. And I have several kids books I’d like to get to, as well as resurrecting two older manuscripts, both romances, which just need scanned and converted to a current Word format so I can do some light editing. I just need to do it. Can I have a few more days off please? Maybe the rest of the year. Yeah, I didn’t figure that was going to happen either.

As you can see, I have several more stories coming out in the next bit. Don’t let yourself fall behind! Discover what’s already available and get caught up now. My books are available in print and can be ordered from bookstores as well. I’m currently trying to get them into the library system too, so check with your local library.

Well, let’s take a look at the numbers for the week, shall we?

Fiction words written last week: 4,010 words

Blogs/Newsletter articles/non-fiction written:  1,038 words

Writing month to date total: 30,654 words for August and 3,150 so far in September.

Writing year to date total: 260,233 words – I have now beat last year’s word count. I have now written well over half a million words in the last two years. That feels pretty dang good, even if I don’t end up hitting my word count goal for this year. I knew it would be a stretch, but I wanted to push myself. Who knows? I still have four months to really be focused.

Drawing/painting last week: I finished a few pieces. It’s now getting hard to tell what I’ve started and finished within a week. It’s all overlapping and blurring together. I did also make corrections to a piece that I “finished” over a year ago but has been bugging me. So far, I like it, but maybe after it gets returned to the wall and I stare at it some more, I’ll see more things that need to be done. Someone really needs to buy this piece so it can escape! (The link shows the original “finished” not the new touch-ups as of my writing this, but you can see an unofficial picture of the touch-ups here).  In the end, I spent about 3 hours painting.

Audio: I spent 5 hours recording and editing audio. I am going to start uploading Stardust this week, though I still have one more track to complete. Then, I get to go back to Sacred Knight. I’ve recorded all the voices, except for Steigan’s because I do his as I do the narration read, for the remainder of the book. I really hope that this time through all sounds good. I haven’t made any booth changes since I recorded 1-800-Mischief and Stardust, so it should be the same quality.

As I said above, I also did up the cover for Space Ninja’s Aren’t Real. I’m putting the final touches on the manuscript now and it should be to my first reader soon.

That’s all for now! Stay tuned for more adventures!