State of the Book #3: April 29, 2012

Hello again! I hope you're all doing well out there in the ether. It's been a lovely day here in Piedmont North Carolina-- clear skies, sunshine, warm but not too warm. Since I'm a bit of a vampire, I mostly kept to the shade-- got to preserve my ghastly pallor, after all. I did drag myself to the Y for a Zumba class, though, and while I was there I saw a food-truck festival, part of our local campaign against Amendment 1. I had all my gym stuff with me, so I couldn't stay long, but I did have a  Locopop and a nice little walk.  I'd like to live closer to downtown someday, so I could get to stuff like that more easily.

As for the book, you'll be happy (I hope) to know that I'm now editing Chapter 3. The new working title is THE WOODS AND THE CASTLE, though that might very well change when I get closer to the end. The manuscript now weighs in at about 31,000 words-- around half the projected total. So far I've been putting out about a chapter a month, but I'd like to do better than that-- it would be great if I could finish before the end of July. 

After WOODS/CASTLE is finished, I have decided to get started on the SNOWBERRY rewrite. It looks like it'll be a trilogy-- there seems to be a natural law that requires every YA fantasy writer to produce a trilogy. It's much easier coming up with titles for this project, for some reason: the second book will keep the title of SNOWBERRY, and the first will be called PUCK'S LUCK. 

I've also been working on the short story I mentioned last time. I'm on the second draft now. You may recall that I was supposed to have it done three weeks ago? I seem to have a much harder time writing short stories than I do novels-- which is unfortunate, because they're extremely educational. You can read two of my earlier stories here and here. 

I'm off to Game of Thrones night now-- missed last week and immediately regretted it-- so that's all she wrote for now. Have a great week!

--Kate