All The Projects

Keeping to only one work in progress at a time is good advice.

Of course it’s not advice that can always be followed, or even should be followed. There are always exceptions. If I completely stall out on one story, it’s better for me to make progress on something different than for me to just do nothing.

I suppose that’s what’s landed me here. In the past month I’ve worked on my main work in progress, Libby’s story. I’ve worked on Gretchen’s story just a bit. I’ve worked on Cecily’s story. I’ve spend a few minutes on Emeline’s. And I’ve spent most of my work hours on my YouTube project.

The scatterbrained work is definitely better than feeling like I’m wading through quicksand or like I just can’t get myself together.

Libby’s story (which has about nine potential titles, all of which suck), will be a full length novel. It’s a contemporary, and if I was going to describe it in just a few lines, it would be something like this:

This is the story of a celebrity.

It’s the story of the woman who was his best friend, the friend who saved him.

And it’s the story of a woman who had to choose to save herself.

It’s 56K words right now and I expect it to land between 75K and 85K. I’m at the point where I have to write the rising action and climax, and that’s always where I get stuck. I have to do it justice. I have to make all the threads come together in a few tight chapters. I have to respect and weave together all of the themes, while making sure that it all makes sense together and feels GENUINE. It’s not a small task. It’s intimidating, but I shall prevail. If I were going to guess at a potential release date, I would say fall. I really hoped that after making y’all wait so long for All That Stands Between Us, I’d be able to crank this one out faster, but alas…life.

As for Gretchen, Cecily, and Emeline’s stories, I have a rough plan for each of them. Right now, I imagine that they will each end up being novellas. Perhaps even three novellas released as a collection, or something. They’re all Dalthia characters, in case you didn’t recognize their names. Gretchen was Ella’s maid. Cecily and Emeline worked for Marilee. I love them all, and I want to do them justice.

My YouTube project is the easy one. The content is already written, and now that I have the right equipment and I’ve done several videos, it’s almost a non-issue to record and edit them. All I need for those is time. It doesn’t tax my brain the way my writing does.

I now have six chapters of Just Ella available on YouTube and I hope y’all are enjoying them.

And I hope you’ll check out some of my other videos. For example, the one where I show you my original version of Just Ella, with its original title and cover. Or the one where I talk about my refusal to describe eye color in detail. Or maybe the one where I show you the bloody letter from Painting Rain (with real blood on it).

OR! If you just want a good chuckle, you should check out the music videos I do with my siblings.

So, what do y’all think? Do any of those projects interest you?