Progress Report – December 2013

December 2013 was chilly.

Posted Works

The month started off with creating and posting a completely unexpected holiday story about Carmen and Levi, called Calendar Turning Event #3111. To celebrate the holidays, I added Stocking Stuffers 2013 and Advice From My Universes to Yours.

Also, in response to a prompt about family, I added the Levi-Otra-centric Meeting of the Minds, where Marci Cavendish is first seen in any context other than a dream. In response to the favorite things challenge, I posted The Continuing Adventures of Porthos – The Future Cat.

In addition, on Fanfiction.net, I finished spinning out Take Back the Night. And in order to fill in some stories I had written but not posted there before, I added Gossip, gossip and In Memory of Kelsey Haber. I then returned to the Daranaean Emergence series and added Temptation, Some Assembly Required, and Debate, and began to spin out The Continuing Adventures of Porthos – The Future Cat.

Also, I imported Gossip, gossip, Take Back the Night, In Memory of Kelsey Haber, Temptation, Some Assembly Required and Debate into Fictionpad.

I added There’s Something About Hoshi and There’s Something Else About Hoshi to my slash topic on The G and T Show. The reception was so good there that I began adding Crackerjack. I added The Continuing Adventures of Porthos – The Future Cat to TrekBBS.

Finally, on Wattpad, I finished posting the wholly original comedy, Revved Up. I also added Freak School. I added Alien Encounter, and began spinning out Crackerjack.

Milestones

For individual read counts, the following stories have 20,000 or more on one URL –

• Reversal

So for individual read counts, the following stories have 10,000 or more on one URL –

• Fortune
• Intolerance
• More than a Will to Live
• Temper
• Together (this story has over 20,000 reads on combined URLs)

All of these were accomplished on Ad Astra.

The following stories have between 5,000 and 9,999 reads on one URL –

• A Long, Long Time Ago
• Everybody Knows This is Nowhere
• He Stays a Stranger
• Hold Your Dominion
• Ohio
• Spring Thaw
• Take Back the Night
• The Three of Us
• Where the Wind Comes Sweepin’ Down the Plain
• You Mixed-Up Siciliano (milestone accomplished this month)

Combined Read Counts

Apart from the others at over 5,000 reads for just one URL, the following combine to 5,000 – 9,999 reads when all postings’ URLs are taken into consideration –

• Shake Your Body
• The Point is Probably Moot
• The Puzzle, a Tale Told in Pieces

WIP Corner

I finished the first draft of Play and began the next book in the Barnstorming series, Time Out. I also worked on an original story, The Obolonk Murders.

Prep Work

So I sent out my first-ever query letter! This was for Untrustworthy, my NaNoWriMo winner, and the letter was sent to Riverdale Avenue Books. It was for a competition. That site publishes eBooks, and only nine are listed in their HSF imprint (horror, science fiction and fantasy). So we’ll see; I should hear by the first of February. I’m not expecting the moon.

I also spent time looking for more possible places to submit Untrustworthy, and learning about how to improve my query letter and otherwise increase my chances for publication.

I split up the timeline pages a bit more as they had gotten rather huge and unwieldy.

This Month’s Productivity Killers

The holidays loomed large, at the same time that I was both looking for work and trying to learn new and better ways to try to become a published author.