​Monday, April 29 --- 4,677 words

Tuesday, April 30 --- 5,176 words

Wednesday, May 1 --- 6,920 words

Thursday, May 2 --- 3,224 words

Friday, May 3 --- 4,733 words

Saturday, May 4 --- 7,340 words

Sunday, May 5 --- 12,075 words

TOTAL words for Week 2 --- ​44,145 words

After last week's success, I feel like I'm on a roll (or a bun or a croissant...). As you might have guessed with my terrible joke, I'm looking to do something fun and light after all the heaviness of horror in the first week, so I'm going to start on a twofer that will be a humorous fantasy caper and a sequel - one for this week and one for next week. Here's the description of the series itself:

All the unusual villainous creatures of mythology band together Ocean’s Eleven style to steal something from the “good guys.” Golems, goblins, gorgons, harpies, banshees, zombies, etc. Each one possesses a unique skill that helps them have a fighting chance against the so-called heroes.

And the first book, which has a working title of Cheaper By the Scoundrel.

Golems, goblins, and gorgons all have a bad rap, but it’s undeserved. It’s just so the man can keep them down. And the humans currently putting heel to neck just increased the taxes on the underworld to unbearable levels. Zombies’ arms are falling off from overwork, harpies have laryngitis, and the scorpion tail of the akra-boo-a-meh-loo has lost its sting.
 
Stheno is the mightiest of the gorgons, but she’s as stuck as the next guy. She’s just worked three double-shifts in a row at her construction job, and can see no way to pay off the new taxes and still put food on the table for her kids. While complaining at the local watering hole for disreputable sorts, she attracts quite a crowd by being so outspoken about the current government—usually a one-way ticket to the dungeon under King Robert’s castle.
 
But when others gather near, a plan is soon hatched to Robin Hood their tax money back from the heroes to save their community. What follows is a madcap adventure that involves drunken princesses, greedy oracles, and sex-mad monks all bent on stopping the “bad guys.”

What do you think - would you want to read it? Please let me know in the comments below!

I'm still working on the draft of The Ink Collector, BUT I have to announce that I DID pass the 40,000 word mark as of today. So, while I'll be completing the novel tonight and probably writing right up to the wire to get to "The End," the project (as of week 1) has so far been successful.

While I'm typing up the last few words (and I'll update the word count in the post below, so that you can see how much I got written in 6 days), here's a bit of entertainment for you: me reading an excerpt from my new novel.

Tomorrow, I'm starting to write a brand new book in a brand new genre, so stay tuned! I'll be posting about it here and keep you updated throughout the week on how it's going. Until then, hope everyone can get out and enjoy the nice spring weather! :)

I've hinted about the novel I'm doing today on a recent podcast where I was a guest, The Brewing Fiction Podcast. The genre is speculative fiction, specifically supernatural horror. While I won't give away everything about the book, here's the story summary:

Ami feels haunted by the death of her twin sister when they were both thirteen. She’s consumed by guilt for not being able to save her sister from drowning and has since struggled with depression, which she expresses through her dark and graphic art. Fresh out of high school, Ami apprentices with an odd duck mentor to follow her dream of becoming a tattoo artist. But something seems to be going wrong with several of the people her mentor tattoos—the subject matter of the artwork seems to be coming to life and creating human monsters. Is the ink activating something in the people who were already susceptible to committing violence? Or is it a terrible coincidence? Ami’s not sure if she’s imagining everything until a good friend of hers goes rogue after she gets inked. That leaves Ami with a final solution to discover what’s going wrong: to put herself under the needle.

The working title is: The Ink Collector.

Here's me reading the summary:

It's here! It's here! It's here!

I had a lovely chat with The Brewing Fiction podcast's hosts Keith M. Leonard and H.R. Parker about writing, editing, ghostwriting, and - of course - my upcoming project, Author Versus AI. Our chat had so much great information that it's been split into two episodes, and the first one is out today.

​Check it out HERE on Keith's website, and it's also available on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, iHeart, and YouTube.

​Okay, here's a status update. I'll be regularly posting these as we go.

Book summaries finished: 52
Chapter-by-chapter outlines finished: 52
Character sketches complete: 30 (oops - need to hustle)
Character images saved: 0 (double oops - time to scroll for images online!!!)

As you can tell from my list, I like to be prepared (but have fallen a bit behind). I SHOULD have all of these things complete by the time I start on Tuesday (or, at least, nearly done). Being prepared is the key to writing quickly. As long as you have a chapter-by-chapter outline and you know your characters, you can write ANYTHING quickly. It's your roadmap to writing your book. Without it, you're flailing to figure things out, and you're much more likely to add in contradictions in the plot and in the characters and then have to go back and fix those later.

One self-pubbed book I read fairly recently had a girl who absolutely HATED milk in Chapter 1 - she would never touch the stuff. A couple of chapters later, the scene opens with her drinking a big ol' glass of milk. While I don't know if the author outlined the book or not - or created a character sheet or not - being organized about both BEFORE you start writing can help avoid problems like these in your novels.

That doesn't meant that you can't jump off the path from your outline now and again. I totally do. I began my writing life as a pantser, but quickly learned that I would sometimes write myself into a corner. There's nothing worse than having to throw out your three latest chapters and start again because the story can't continue as you've written it.

So, in the interests of not wasting my time, I learned to outline. And now I'm pretty good at sticking to the script and figuring out how to stay within my wordcount. Most of my chapters will be between 1500-3500 words, with a few veering off into slightly more or slightly less. That way, I can estimate a book's wordcount AND self-edit myself so that I stay on track to finish 40,000 words in a week for my Author Versus AI project.

However, that doesn't mean you're locked into the outline exactly as it is when you're writing. I like to futz around with some scenes and add more ideas that I never thought about when outlining. That's part of the fun of creativity. Sometimes I'll add whole scenes, as long as the overall organization of the plot stays the same. That gives me both structure and freedom when I write - the best of both worlds.

​That's all for now, but look out for my next writing update on April 23rd!

We've started the FINAL COUNTDOWN to Author Versus AI! Only a week to go - I'll be starting my BIG project on April 23rd on Global Book Day. 

​​If you'd like to learn more about my project, I recently had a lovely chat on The Brewing Fiction Podcast with hosts Keith M. Leonard and H.R. Parker about how I'll be writing a book a week for a year. The first part of the podcast episode will air on Sunday, April 21st and the second part will air on Sunday, April 28th.

Also, there are a few other podcasts around the corner where I'll be speaking more about Author Versus AI after I get started. Stay tuned!