Writing In 2015: Updates and Such

It's been a few weeks since I posted anything about how the writing is going. Well, basically, I lost a few weeks to recurrent illness that took me down more than once and also affected the household. Thankfully, we're all pretty much past it.

Your friendly, neighborhood writer is just trying to get back on the writing horse. I've been reviewing works that are complete but unpublished. I also realized that I wasn't finished with a novella I though was done. (It will probably be a full-fledged novel.) I've completed four short stories in what has become an unofficial challenge. I haven't announced it here, because I didn't hit my goal last year. You could say I took off the pressure of reporting here for whomever might be reading my posts.

That said, I think I will share what I've been up to this year so far.

SHORT STORIES

1. Holy Orders - 6, 556 words

2. The Earthly Spirit - 5, 498 words

3. The Last Sacrifice - 3, 012 words

4. Duty and Devotion - 7, 411 words

One thing I'd add just because I find it pretty cool is that these four stories bring my current count of finished short stories to 45. Yep, that's a lot of short fiction. I've had some of them combined in a collection called Other Realms: Volume One and I'll soon have enough of them to have a Volume Two. You should stay tuned for that bit of news.

THE NOVELLA TURNED NOVEL

The other thing I did was write a novella I tentatively titled The Souleaters. I wrote it and found what I thought was the ending and moved on to thinking about other projects. Lately, I came back to re-read the thing and realized I hadn't truly finished it at all. In all honestly, I botched it up and figured out that I'd only written about a third or maybe half of a full novel.

I added more words to the final section I'd written. Now called A Theft of Souls, I plan to write the rest over the next few weeks or so. I may or may not update you on this work in progress (WIP). 

OTHER WORK

While I will try to focus on the complete of the novel, I know my mind will wander to other things too, so I have to be prepared for that tendency. Thus, having WIPs at various stages might allow me to drift around some but also stay focused enough to wrap up A Theft of Souls. (I could be full of it too, but I haven't let that stop me yet.)

What is on the other burners, so to speak? Well, there are about a dozen short stories brewing and at least three other novel starts that've been begging for attention. Currently, I have a mind to finish them all while simmering the sequel to another of my books, A Kingdom of Shadows.

Yep, I'm scheming here. Scheming about more fiction. Much more fiction. That sounds pretty fun to me.