Hello, dreamers. My birthday was last week, and with that my thirties are officially over. But I have a good feeling about my forties, and I gave myself a little birthday present last night: I finished another story. I have another busy week coming, but I’m loving every second of this. That said, here’s what I’ll be working on this week:

Querying Pioneers

This week, I finally did it: I wrote a query letter. It’s far from perfect. It needs work. It’s not ready to go out yet. But it’s a start, and it feels like a big one.

I know I rave about the podcast a lot, but “The Shit No One Tells You About Writing” has been immensely helpful. Still, in part I credit this sudden breakthrough to my recent writing. I found myself looking for ways to make my plot paragraphs more impactful. And that helped to get the ball rolling.

I still have a lot of work to do. In addition to revising my query letter, I need to write a synopsis. I plan to spend the next day or so reading up on the do’s and don’ts of writing a genre fic synopsis, this time also expanding my research to include pointers on synopses for multi-POV stories. If I can get through all that, by the end of the week I’ll be reviewing my query targets, in preparation for querying in the coming month. Finally, it feels like it’s all coming together. This is the year.

Short Fiction

I just keep going. Another week, another complete story. That’s three in three. I am on fire.

This week’s story really felt special. The First Night on Eridani turned out to be exactly what I wanted it to be: a classic sci-fi tale of mystery and discovery. A vanished alien civilization, a mysterious structure on a distant planet. And a story that evolved into an exploration of what makes us who we are, and what we choose to leave behind.

While I was relieved to be done with In Living Color, I was sad to see The First Night on Eridani come to an end. But I’m pressing onward. Yesterday I wrote a new sketch, which I liked but didn’t really feel like something that could evolve into a complete story. So today I’ll be doing another one. In the meantime, I spent some time last night writing a bit on several outstanding projects. At least one of those will likely be fairly short when completed, and I may simply pick that one up to get it off the slate. But if recent experience has taught me anything, sooner or later something new will jump out at me.

New Content

This week, I’ll be making a “Dear Sir or Madam” post, which I’d delayed last week as I was absorbed with actual writing. I may also put up a new “Self-Pub Sunday” post this week, but as I said last week, I’ve put my planned next release on hold for now.

As I mentioned last week, the recent changes to my writing style have left me feeling more critical of Facula. I still believe the overall premise and dialogue are excellent. The problem I have is with…well, most everything else. Every time I look at the opening chapters, I’m left thinking “I know I can do better than this”. And given that I feel this is an excellent, unique story, I feel I owe it to my readers as well as myself to make sure if they’re paying for my work, they’re getting me at my very best.

Since I’ve decided to delay the release for a month, more than likely I’ll end up completely rewriting entire chapters. So keep an eye out for further updates. And until then, dare to dream. – MK