Lightbulb

[Key Lime Python]

As you know, I've been working toward preparing my chapter book series, Doomimals, and my son's two chapter book series, Just Us Chickens (about zany super chickens) and Key Lime Python (about a swashbuckling snake who regularly takes down cosmic entities to protect the universe), for publication, so you can read them.  Just this week, in one of many conversations on the books, we came up with a brainstorm on how to unify not just the first book into one coherent whole but also the whole first set of 9 books (plus a bonus, backstory book), which is what we'll release first.   

[Little Dread Hen's Phoenix Form]

Heretofore, I've emphasized the coming of the Dog of War that the kids will need to fight.  That will still be the case, but I will foreground the Little Dread Hen, aka Nugget, an evil phoenix and a bad guy who is and has always been there from the beginning, but who hasn't been properly built up to and foreshadowed.  I am a pantser, so I tend to have a vague idea of where I'm going and pin it down with a rough outline as I go along.  Now that I have these first several books, I can use the literary techniques I have learned through my experience earning a bachelor's and master's degree in English (see my other writing blog) to turn these books into a unified set, building up to a finale, akin to the first season in a series.  My boy's afterwords are even called "post-credit scenes" as in Marvel and other such movies.  

I'm still shooting to get these books ready by early fall since I have most of the next two weeks earmarked for that purpose.  I'll keep those who stay tuned here posted on all the developments as I move that way.  

Stalled

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This is usually the time of year when I have plenty of time to get writing, editing, etc. done.  But this is a strange year.  I usually teach two classes, which leaves some time between grading weeks.  But everything has switched around at the school where I teach online.  I only got one class to teach.  Also, COVID disappeared some of my work from my other job in the beginning the quarantine but has added work on this other end.  I transcribe for students and other clients who are deaf and hard of hearing.  Work usually dries up between school years, during the summer.  This year, I've actually been able to get a lot more work than usual, in part because of the COVID situation.  Between teaching and my other day job, I'm busy a lot more of the time than I expected, leaving me less time to work on writing.  In addition, I've been helping family members work on their homes, one family member to prepare for a refi and one to prepare to sell one home and move into another.  This has eaten up what time work has left untouched.

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Sadly, this has put a damper on my enthusiastic progress toward polishing my stories.  Now that work is slowing, and the other two situations with homes are close to a resolution, I believe I can spend the last half of summer focusing on editing and polishing my writing.  This is going to happen.  It has to.