24 hours left of the Hive’s Spring Writers Retreat in Reedsburg Wisconsin, and I choose to work on my website. Except it has been so long I both don’t remember what I am doing and WordPress has changed just a bit…or maybe it’s my memory?
The last few years have seen Covid strike my family and friends, and we have lost a few people, a few dear ones most recently. This retreat has been a welcome cocoon from planning Celebrations of Life, as well as from dealing with my new home and the family we have gathered under its roof. Yep, we sold our old place and bought a new home, moved in with my mom, my daughter and her fiancee, and we could not be happier. But oh the time and money involved!
I am on new medications, been through new tests, more yet to go through, and you do not want to hear about this stuff. That’s just life.
This place is about my writing.
I have written some amazing short stories for contests and magazines that I continue to send out. If they are ever published, I will let you know, but the months go by and no one seems to love them like I do. But I will keep trying. This is what short story writers do. Finding a home for a story is just not that easy. I was hoping with my 3rd place wins in 2021 and 2022 for the Omega Awards would help, but other than being a fantastic experience hearing your story read by some wonderful people, those stories are still working through possible publishers.
Nan and I have decided at this time we will wrap up Harrogate Chronicles as a 3 book series and the rest will be documenting their assignments and lives with short stories and novellas. I have other books I want to write and Nan is already hoppin’ on hers! Check out the beginning of her new series with the book Your Goyle and Mine.
She and I are finishing up book 2 of The Harrogate Chronicles, so far named Merlin’s Tomb. During this retreat, we finished Draft 2. What does that even mean? It means we have followed our outline and written the chapters and scenes, then we have gone through each other’s work and tidied them up a bit. Moving forward we read for plot holes and issues. We spotted a doozy already. If you give Esme a ring in Chapter 2, you should use it in the book somewhere! So we will fix these problems and call it Draft 3, then Draft 4 will be putting all the chapters together and doing more line edits and close edits. Our job is to get it as fine-tuned as possible and we hope to have Book 2 out by June and Book 3 plotted. Blink Blink. We are determined.
Go read Nan’s new series, watch my website change as I customize and figure out how this doohickey works, and do good in the world. Be kind. Watch a sunrise. Close your eyes and feel that breeze.
Susan Wachowski 