How in the hell is it November already? Seriously. This year has just flown by.

So…how’d I do in October?

Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

• Keep my short stories on submission
• Keep querying agents
• Prep for C4
• Finish revising a short story I’ve been noodling with and send it out
• Get my WiP ready for first readers

Well. That didn’t go as planned.

There’s lots of reasons (excuses) I could list–illness, travel, events, autumn yardwork, birthdays, dayjob eating my spoons–all true, but they don’t really matter. I didn’t get anywhere near what I wanted to accomplish in October.

I didn’t have any short stories come back this month, so I didn’t have anything to send back out. I also didn’t send out any new stories. There’s still a few stories that are under consideration, so that’s okay. I didn’t get my next round of agent queries out, and I’ll probably wait until the new year to start querying again. That book is still under consideration with a few agents from my initial rounds, so we’ll see what happens there.

Got my C4 prep done, but it was a near thing! I was still some printing signage on the opening day of the con, but I got done what needed doing. C4 was fun. It was awesome to spend an weekend hanging with Samantha Beiko and Clare Marshall at our booth. Lots of cool stuff happened. More on that later in my C4 2016 Roundup post.

I finally finished a story I’ve been puttering with since January, and got it to my writing group for critique. I’m counting that because I badly needed a victory this month. The story still needs a bit of a spit polish, but it should be out on submission soon. It’s a fun one (I originally started it for a comedy anthology) set in the Thunder Road ‘verse, but with a completely different voice, and a protagonist inspired partly by one of my writer pals, who I hope won’t hold this fictional pastishe of her misadventures with wildlife against me (or at least, will only seek revenge via Tuckerization).

The big one eluded me again. The novel WiP is nowhere near ready for my first readers. Inserting the new scenes and smoothing things over has taken more time than I’d like, and I’ve been more distracted/exhausted than I’d like. It’s coming along though. I’m hopeful that I’ll still have this one out on submission by year’s end.

And for November?

• Keep my short stories on submission
• Reread An Excuse for Whiskey so me and Sandra can get to the end
• Get my WiP to my first readers

Write on.