Another week done. I really, really, really can’t believe we’re nearing the end of this year so quickly.

My son came home from college over the weekend. It’s good to have him back; the house feels full again. I’ve been torturing him about branding/logos. We’ve been working mine over. He’s currently told me to “go sleep on it” so I can give our developments some space and I can review them accurately with fresh eyes. He’s right, but dang it, I’m too much of a bulldog. Once I get into something, I like to get it done. Otherwise, I’m likely to be bored and not come back. I know myself all too well. But, I’ll hope he can keep me on task now.

He’s become such an amazing adult. Both my boys are. And yes, it’s hard to believe they are both full blown adults now. They still feel like my young babies. It’s weird. *grin*

I have so much to get done over the next few weeks. There’s a special promotion deal I’m going to be in during December — more on this later. I also have 1, maybe 2 shows to do in December. Just for these two things alone I have quite a list. But there’s so much more I want to get in before December hits. Hence why getting the branding/logos done are so important; I have a lot of things to get set up before the end of the year. I’m really trying to breathe about several things in my life, but this mostly.

I am currently working on the last chapter of the audio on For a Good Time, Call Loki. I might even be uploading it this next week. It still won’t be available for several more weeks, but at least I’m getting there. I got so worried that I wouldn’t have time to get anything else recorded that I thought I was going to be audio-less for a couple weeks. I really didn’t want to break my rhythm for it. Fortunately, the universe opened up time for me and I got to jump in my booth for a couple hours. I recorded Falls’s Confession. Okay, I had a lot of fun recording it. It will be interesting to see if it works the way I did it. I hope it does. I think it makes a delightful read that way, but we’ll see.

So, with these, that means I’ve got some cover work to do – got to get the audio covers together. And I saw a bunch of errors in Fall’s Confession — some that most people wouldn’t even recognize as “wrong” because it’s all standardization that I started after Fall’s Confession.

I keep thinking that I want to do something different with the cover of The Doorway Prince too. Right now, it screams “sad literary fiction story” rather than “epic fantasy.” I just haven’t ever been happy with any of my attempts. I keep hoping something will come to me. Maybe the fantasy cover art style will change and I’ll be fashionable. *grin and laughter* Yeah, right!

Well, that was me thinking out loud there. My head is swimming with graphic design thoughts right now from working on my branding and trying to come up with something semi-uniform that I like and speaks to my work (preferably something that works with both my books and my art – nothing like making it doubly hard).

I am also up at 100 days in a row for reaching my daily writing goal. The pressure is on now! It’ll be interesting to see if I can maintain it during this week of Thanksgiving. I did have a chance this last week to outline Cirvel’s story to current. I don’t know when I finished it, but if I haven’t mentioned it earlier, I also have Dragons of Wellsdeep current on the outline. Having these two stories up-to-date with an outline is making it easier to see the direction I need to go and to write that way. Mind you, I’m not plotting the book — I’m still discovering the story as I go; I’m just keeping better notes as I go along. I also started on the outline notes for Stonecharmer — even though it’s written already, I’ll like having the notes for working on the second and third ones in the series. Then I still have Elliot’s and Siva’s stories to get caught up on this way. Then The Missing Thread (Sacred Knight #5) and Loki’s novella. Just a few stories.

I’m hoping with the outlines done, writing between several stories will make the words go quickly and I’ll get them done this week. We shall see.

I wish all my readers in the states a very Happy Thanksgiving. May you all find time to curl up with a good book this week.

Now to the numbers:

Fiction words written last week:  4,805 words.

Blogs/Newsletter articles/non-fiction written:  1,906 words.

Daily word goal reached for 100 days! Weekly word goal reached for 17 weeks.

Writing month to date total:  18,136 words

Writing year to date total: 298,681 words

Drawing/painting last week: No painting last week, though I was out buying more painting supplies. That counts, right? *grin* I hope to have some new, small paintings by the show in December.

Audio: I spent 8 hours recording and editing audio. Yes, I might be obsessing again, but then again, I did say that I was granted an extra 2 hours last week unexpectedly, which I used as booth time, so I’m not sure it counts as obsessing. I just knew if I didn’t get it in, I wasn’t going to have a chance to get to the booth for a couple weeks. I really wanted to have something to work on.