Another New Writing Schedule

Okay, here's an updated version of my writing schedule for the next few months--circumstances have changed, thus so does the calendar.

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November -- Write the first draft of Operation Valiant; finish editing a novel for a friend; begin a novella called Calm Tom Dawson.

December -- Finish editing The Night Phoenix; try to finish Calm Tom Dawson;

January -- Work on a query letter for The Night Phoenix; if I haven't yet, I have to finish Calm Tom Dawson; give The Night Phoenix a few last check-overs.

February -- Send the query letter for The Night Phoenix to Mr. Rothe at Black Rose Writing; edit Calm Tom Dawson.

March -- Begin work on self-publishing Calm Tom Dawson (cover art, final edits, formatting)

April -- Self-publish Calm Tom Dawson; return to Operation Valiant and edit the first draft.

May -- Take a break before I fall down dead.

Makeshift Calendar

Here is my vague calendar for the next few months, relating to writing.
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November (LESS THAN A DAY AWAY! *dies): Write Operation Valiant; edit my friend Mary's novel; work on The Elven Werewolf Project with August Sinister and Nevik; don't die.

December: Edit The Night Phoenix; put Operation Valiant away for a month to give myself time to dwell on it; don't die.

January: Work on a query letter for The Night Phoenix; start editing Operation Valiant; don't die.

February: Finish editing Operation Valiant; don't die.

March: Fall down dead.
~
Okay, I think I'm good.

Update on The Night Phoenix

So, I might have mentioned a while ago (or maybe I didn't... ah well) that I was editing The Night Phoenix. Well, I finished that a few weeks ago.

Then I turned the manuscript over to a person I met on www.holyworlds.org ; his username there is Aratrea, and that's what I'll call him to avoid confusion. I had posted a notice on the fantasy section of that website, asking if anyone would be able to do a third edit of The Night Phoenix (I had already read through it twice). Aratrea offered to do the job.

I got the revised copy back just a few hours ago. I haven't gotten the chance to read it, but it seems like he made quite a few suggestions--and all of them are very helpful.

So I'm going to go through again and make changes again. Then, depending on how I feel about it, I might ask another of my friends to edit it again. If I like how it turned out, I might just leave it and start working on a query letter to send out to some publishers.

Wish me luck!

I Discovered Something!

I was editing the first chapter of The Night Phoenix today. As I did so, I was trying to think of a plausible excuse for the two shapeshifters. I mean, it's not like everyone will be completely ignorant or oblivious to the fact that a wolf or a fox shapeshifts into a mouse all of a sudden--even if they're not paying close attention.

As always, the answer was right in front of me, and had been for quite some time.

I started a roleplay with a friend of mine, Mary Hills (you can find her blog here: Writing Progress ). Rowan, who is one of my shapeshifters from The Night Phoenix, is one of my characters in the roleplay.
Well, in that roleplay, I had Rowan shift into the form of a human. My brain, I think, was telling me, "It's just a roleplay, you don't have to play by the rules of your novel."
This afternoon though, I realized--why in the world is one of the rules of my novel a rule that says the shapeshifters can only shift into the form of animals? I mean, why?

I don't quite know. Perhaps I made that rule up at 4:00 in the morning, which was when I first started writing The Night Phoenix (I got up early, since it was the first day of NaNoWriMo, and I wanted a head start on this race I was involved in).

Anyway, I'm extremely excited about this. The shapeshifters' ability to become a human could take the novel into so many different directions! So, I'm going to decide on what their human forms look like (I already have Rowan's human form mostly created, I think; not Aelfcynn's), and then decide which places in the novel they'll be human.

If anyone has any ideas what Aelfcynn's human form should look like, please let me know! ((Oh, and as a sidenote; she usually shapeshifts into the shape of a pure white wolf with green eyes.))

Thanks, guys! You rock! : )

The Night Phoenix

The Night Phoenix is, as some of you may know, a novel I finished for National Novel Writing Month, 2011.
Truth be told, I was supposed to have been finished editing it by now. The fact is, I haven't gotten very far at all. My life got insanely hectic right after National Novel Writing Month ended. Then, once I got some free time, I was feeling so depressed, I didn't feel like doing any writing at all--except for poetry.
However, as of Tuesday, I decided to continue on with my editing. My inital plan had always been to at least get the manuscript of The Night Phoenix sent to a publisher by summer of 2012; and that's still my plan. I'm simply going to have to force myself to stop procrastinating.

I've made some major changes so far, and there will most likely be more to come. One of my supporting characters had originally been called Ian Asher; I've changed it to Ethan Asher now. That's probably the biggest change I've made--so far, anyway.
Besides that, I seriously have to get back on track and do some more researching on Area 51 and the FBI; they play integral parts in the novel, and I'm afraid I slacked off on describing those two things accurately.

Anyway, after I'm finished with the inital editing processes, I'm going to send a query letter to one of two publishers: Malachite Quills or Black Rose .
If--the tiny amount of optimist in me wants to say 'when', but I'll refrain--my novel is accepted, I'm definitely going to be busy promoting it and creating a book trailer for it. Nothing too fancy; probably just artwork and maybe a few clips of scenery. I don't have very many resources to actually film a trailer with costumes and everything as of yet. Perhaps one day...