Still Plugging Away

I managed another 1500 words today (rounding off), which pushes me over the 46K mark. I’m guessing there is about another 2000 words left for this story. Maybe more. I don’ t know. I keep changing my mind and adding more internal with my two characters. hehe

My goal is to finish by the end of the week. Because this weekend and next will be consumed with Contest Hell.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. It’s not that bad.  I really don’t mind working on the contest, but it is very time consuming and will be absorbing most of my waking hours after work next week. I have a lot of steps to complete before I can get them out the virtual door.

I will be spending a lot of hours at the computer putting together score sheets and getting them ready to email to the judges. And I’m still short about 20 judges. Which is scary, to say the least. I did a mass email last night and got a few responses. Hopefully we will get more before the day is out.

Anyway. It’s a lot of work. But when I get comments that it’s a great contest and the entrants have received good feedback, it makes it all worthwhile.

However, this week, I’m consumed with finishing Take Me I’m Yours. Wrote a very emotional scene from Marion’s POV and got some great meat in there. I’m starting to visualize the ending, which is great progress for me. Especially since I’m so not a plotter.

I’ve found myself very “in the zone” with this book. I’ve really enjoyed spending time with these characters. There’s something about it that’s different from the others I’ve done and I can’t quite explain it. It’s like when I sit down to write, the characters start speaking to me and drive the story. It feels different to write this one. It’s not nearly as forced as Nice Girls Do was and much more in-depth than Talk Dirty To Me (and I won’t even go into the time travel books because they were a beast in and of themselves hehe). It feels very natural and easy and the flow just…happens. I’m not sure that makes sense to anyone but me. 🙂

And once I get this baby done, I’m packing it up and shipping it off to the publisher to see if they’ll–hopefully–buy it.  Well, after a good polish up, that is.

THEN I get to work on my time travel! YAY! This is the jousting novel I started way back when and decided to make it a time travel because my heroine kept talking like a twenty-first century woman. It’s called One Knight Only. I did start to add on a new beginning and it’s very rough, but I really want to get into it. I have a deadline I want to meet. I want a first draft done by the end of February so I’ll have time to edit and polish in March. It’s not due until the end of May, but I still want to get it done and out the door. Sooner is always better than later.

Because, as you may or may not know, I have a five manuscript goal this year. Almost one down, four to go. 😉

I’ve been reading Bloodfever by Karen Marie Moning, the second book in the “Fever” series and I really like it. I’m completely immersed in that world when I’m reading and I seriously think it’s helped my own writing. Not that I’m mimicking her or anything. It just seems to keep me motivated. How novel, eh? Now she needs to hurry up with the third book. LOL

And this is another week of Free Book Friday, so hope ya’ll come back and out of lurkdom to win Melissa Schroeder’s Lessons In Seduction (who is feeling under the weather lately – get well soon, Mel!).