News on two fronts both happy and sad:

Fae and I sold our short story, Snowbound-Lovebound, to Dreamspinner Press for inclusion in their anthology, Mr. Right Now! It's slated for a January 2008 release and will be available in print, as well as ebook form. Here's the blurb:

When animosity is stripped away, all that's left is desire. Traveling together in snowy New England, Bryan Tam and Jimmy Murphy are at each other's throats long before they lose control of their car. Attraction and tempers collide and the storm raging outside is nothing compared to the one going on in the backseat.

We're very excited, this will be our first release!

On a sad note, after almost three years Erotic Dreams publishing is shutting down their e-zine. They were the spark for “My Heart is Within You” and I had another short story out with them. They were wonderful ladies to work with and I’ll miss that, but I know they are moving on to bigger things and have little time to keep it running. Good luck!

Update

I sent off "Iyoku Kei" to Erotic Dreams and heard back from Kay this morning. I ended up being a bit over word count, but she doesn't seem to think that's going to be a problem. Fae and I hadn't heard back from Ellora's Cave regarding Exceptions to the Rule, and Bree usually tells us when she's received something so we emailed her again yesterday to make sure she received it. Sure enough she sent back a reply saying that she didn't. We resent the revisions and she let us know this morning that she got them. *Crosses fingers* We think the revisions went well.

Fae and I decided to submit first chapters to the Launching a Star contest. We sent out the entries yesterday. They said they'd notify the finalists by Nov. 30th.

Otherwise, I'm still working on edits for My Heart is Within You, and Fae and I have started an anthology. It's supposed to be seven stories and we've finished the rough for the first two. I haven't made too much more progress on the writing front this month, but I'm happy with the editing goals.

Update - this will happen more often, I promise

Sometimes I wonder if I have too many projects going on at once. If I were to make a list of everything I'm in the middle of and need to finish, I think I would be overwhelmed. Scratch that, I know I would be.

I know I'm not the only writer with this problem. We seem to talk about it all the time on the boards. There are stories that are finished and still have to be edited. Half a dozen or more stories in various stages of completion, some with deadlines looming. Then of course there is the constant bombardment from your muse with new ideas, or twists on the project your currently working on. Then you hear about a new contest or a call for submissions from a publisher that gets the creative juices flowing.

This month, I'm concentrating on editing. My backlog was getting full and though there are plenty of other projects I could add to the pile I decided to give my attention to the three most urgent.

The first goal was to get Exceptions to the Rule back to Ellora's Cave. They had asked us to do some rewriting to fix some POV issues. We sent it back about a week and a half ago. Now we're waiting to see what they think of the rewrites and edits.

The second goal is to get "Iyoku Kei" off to Erotic Dreams for their magazine in the spring. I'm waiting for my beta to get back to me with her opinion of my edits. With any luck, that will be sent off this week.

The last goal is to make some progress on my edits for My Heart is Within You. It seems that everytime I get started, I'll get about a third of the way in and then I'll read an article on editing and what to look for, or I'll glance at submission requirements and am convinced that I need another look at it. I've started over four times I think. This time, when I finished a chapter, I set it aside in another folder and I'm not touching it again. Even though I found a small continuity error this week. Its something that doesn't change the chapters already edited and it's easily fixed. Of course now I'm paranoid that there are earlier errors that I missed.

Writing Goals

After a week of hell and not being able to concentrate. I finished the rough draft of "Iyoku Kei" for Erotic Dreams. The final word count was 6,109. And I finished Chapter Three of Haunted by Your Soul. Now that the short story is done I was acutally able to get some work done in Karada too, so I feel accomplished. All in all I did 1,696 words today.

Line for the day is:
“I can’t.” My voice cracked and I paused fighting to take a breath as my control over the last several months frayed to a breaking point. “I just can’t.”

Seventy Days of Sweat

All in all I did 1,957 words today over three different projects. I only have approximately 1,500 words left in the short story slated for Erotic Dreams. I didn't get as much done as I wanted for Haunted by Your Soul. I only wrote 433 instead of 850, but since I surpassed my daily goal I'm not too worried.

To take a page from Amelia June's book I'm posting a favorite line from one of the stories.

“We don’t know what he would want because he ain’t here,” I snapped, jumping up and running and hand through my hair, clenching my fist. “God damnit, Kay why ya gotta be so stubborn, jus take the fuckin’ money.”

Intro Post

I've joined in on the "Seventy Days of Sweat" Challenge after already signing up for July's Nano. I figure I'm a glutton, but any challenge helps and it's not as if they don't cancel each other out.

My total word count for last week on actual work is 7,611. My total word count for the fun stuff is 4,522. For once the fun stuff didn't surpass the work.

My favorite quote of the week is from Haunted by Your Soul.

I ran an agitated hand through my hair. Fuck, what kind of a word was askance? Sometimes it seemed as if I was walking around with a combination dictionary and thesaurus downloaded into my brain.