September Wrap-Up

It’s official: I’m a full-time writer now, and I have no idea what I’m doing!

But that’s okay, because I’m slowly figuring it out! September marks what I consider my first full month of being a full-time writer since my kids are back in school, and I’ve been trying to figure out how to manage my time with writing and trying to get our house in order after two plus years of being hidden away during the pandemic. Over the summer, I tried social media for promotion and writing a minimum of 1000 words per day. The result? I basically started September frustrated and burnt out!

So, I decided that September I’d set up more reasonable goals. Instead of getting frustrated when I couldn’t write 1000 words, I decided to keep track of my daily word count and aim for a monthly average of 1000 words! I decided to drop social media and maybe pick those up again once I have more books out. If you’re looking for updates, you can find them here on my blog or through my Facebook Page. I’m not planning on releasing any other books in 2022 and instead focus on polishing up the books I already have published before putting out new books.

My current main goal for 2022 is to polish up my Howls in the Moonlight book. This was the first book I ever published, and even though I absolutely love it, it’s almost a totally different writing style from what I have now. I’m working on removing head-hopping and adding a bit more steam, so we’ll see how that goes! Once I’m done reworking Howls, I’m going to rework my Prince of Shadows book so it’s more inline with my current writing style. I’m also working on redoing the covers for Jane and Gray’s duet so they look more like current YA Academy book covers and then hopefully get some paperbacks released for them.

I currently have ten books fighting for attention in my mind, so it’s been hard trying to figure out what to work on next! I’ve spent September focused on writing four books. I’m totally in love with my new PNR slow burn, spicy Soul Keeper book, which features demons, druids, and a feisty human. This was actually the second book in a series I had planned out, but I had lost the draft for the first book so this series went on the back burner. While I was anxiously awaiting the launch for Wolf Claimed, I worked on Soul Keeper as a totally different palate cleanser. I’m hoping to release Soul Keeper next year with the other two books in the trilogy, but first I have to convince my muse to rewrite the first book.

As for the other three books? Those would be the next three books in my YA slow burn, sweet Andersen Grimm Academy of Elites series! I’m having trouble with this one since Liz’s first book takes place during the same period as Jane and Gray’s duet as a companion novel. So, if you’ve read Jane and Gray’s book, you already know the main surprises for Liz. The tricky part: how do I still make this exciting for my readers? Liz’s second book picks up where Jane and Gray’s duet ends, so that will be totally new. I have about 40k words done for Liz and Ryken’s duet in total with a target of 160k words split between the two books. Rose and Blue’s novella follows next, and I have about 2k words to get that novella off the ground! My plan is to get those three books and Rage’s book (which will be written under Ellie Parin since that’ll be an adult PNR spinoff) in 2024.

Thanks for stopping by! Happy reading!