Progress Reports

Final Round 3 #ROW80 Check-In

Published on by Kait Nolan

I have been generally lousy at actually checking in this round.  Not because I didn’t have things to report, but just because I was busy DOING said things and not taking time out for anything else.  So, to review

Goals for Round 3

  1. Oldie but goodie, write 20 days out of every 30.
  2. Finish writing Turn My World Around, the Wishful novel (#6) I’m 2/3rds of the way through with.  
  3. Finish revisions on Dance Me A Dream (#8), another Wishful novella that’s my contribution to a holiday anthology releasing later this year.
  4. Revise Sooper Seekrit Project Book 1.
  5. Plot out Sooper Seekrit Project Book 3.  
  6. Begin formatting Wishful books for print editions.

How I Did

  1. I wrote 65 days out of the last 83 (since I track my stuff by actual calendar month, not just by round).  In that span, I cranked out 102,825 words.
  2. I did finish Turn My World Around, which released September 1st.
  3. I also finished revisions on Dance Me A Dream, which were next to nil. Awesome Editor said it is the closest thing to perfect I’ve ever handed her.
  4. I didn’t even touch Sooper Seekret Project Book 1.
  5. Didn’t do any plotting on Sooper Seekrit Project Book 3
  6. And I didn’t touch the formatting for print editions.
  7. What I did do is jigger around my production schedule to push back the Sooper Seekrit Project’s release until after the first of the year and moved up the next book in my Wishful series (which may or may not end up as the first of a related spin-off series..we’ll see).  This is Autumn and Judd’s book, which I’ve been waiting to write for nearly two years.  And once I gave it the go ahead, Autumn was more or less “Move over, honey,” and spewed out the first 40k in 20 days (which actually got her together with Judd) And then she abandoned me to slog through the Dreaded Valley of the Shadow of the Middle on my own.  In any event, I cranked out this entire book and sent it off to Awesome Editor this weekend.
  8. And I began the expansion of Wish I Might, the novella I have in the Virtually Yours anthology.  It comes back to me in October and I decided that I wanted to flesh it out a little.  I expected maybe a scene here or there.  Ten scenes later…it’ll probably wind up a short novel.  So once that’s done, I’ll be releasing it out into the wild on its own.

So, all in all, it was a very very productive Round.  I’m quite happy.

Midweek #ROW80 Check-in

Published on by Kait Nolan

The last couple of days have been the kind that make me want to punch something.

I finished up the clean up pass on Turn My World Around and got that sent off to my editor.  And I did the final proofread of Dance Me A Dream, the holiday novella I have coming out in the Romancing The Holidays anthology this November.  Then I did some soul searching and decided to change around my production schedule again.  My Sooper Seekrit Project requires more work than I feel I can reasonably get done by the end of October (when I wanted to release).  Plus I was looking at that second draft like someone had just suggested that I leap out of this perfectly good airplane. November has notoriously been a slow month for releases for me, so I opted to save the second draft of SSP1, revision of SSP2, and writing of SSP3 for the end of the year and move my next Wishful novel on up in the pipeline.  I feel really good about this decision, and I’ve been eagerly awaiting this particular book for quite some time.  I had started this book last year and put it back down because I just wasn’t ready to write it yet.  It wasn’t gelling for me.  But the whole thing is plotted out and ready to go, loaded into Scrivener and everything.  So I spent a little time yesterday evening looking over what I’d written before (not too much) and cutting most of it. I was all set to get started.

And then the Universe started conspiring against me.

My computer has, for the past two weeks, been trying to unsuccessfully install the latest Windows 10 update.  It’s been rebooting on its own (which is problematic) and had done so again while I was at taekwondo last night.  When I got it back up, it was running like crap.  So I started the process of trying to do a system restore (failed).  Hubby started the scan disk before he went to bed.  It was still running this morning.  Without getting into all the steps I took, I spent most of today wrestling with the damn thing (and also having a spite conversation with the office tech guy about Macbooks, which I think I’m going to save up for because I am tired of Windows updates breaking shit).

When I came home at lunch, armed with one of the fleet laptops from work and intending to write, I discovered the dishwasher wasn’t draining.  So when I got home from work, I had to pull out the entire load of dirty dishes (after doing 2 sinkfuls to make room for the ones I needed to pull out), siphon out the water and deal with that.  Thankfully judicious use of vinegar cleared it up without my having to do actual plumbing (although I’ve done that before).

By the time I sat down from dealing with that, teenager got home from her day.  After she filled me in and went to do her own thing, the dogs kept wanting in and out and in and out and basically I just didn’t get a proper chance to write.

And I’m grumpy

But I finally got my computer sorted, made the dishwasher my bitch, and I have a plan for tomorrow, so it’s bound to get better.

Final Round 2 #ROW80 Check-In and Accomplishments

Published on by Kait Nolan

Wow.  It’s already the end of Round 2.  Where is the year going?  I swear it was March just yesterday.  Okay, not really.  It was over 95 yesterday…

SO let’s check in on the goals I set for this round and what my actual accomplishments were.

I said I would…

  1. Post at least twice a week on my blog. Yeah…not so much.  I’m not sure I even checked in every week during this Round.  There’s been a lot going on, including adding a teenager to our household, so I’m not real worried about it.
  2. Write at least 20 out of 30 days.  I did this, but barely.  May included a lot of getting ready for said teenager and a fair amount of plotting.  Not near as much prose as I’ve become accustomed to.  But I did make it!
  3. Do another round of Whole 30. This was epic fail.  We kept trying to start and kept having social events that did not in any way shape or form fit into this kind of challenge.  So that’s on the list for after July 4th.
  4. Finish Sooper Seekrit Project Books 2 and 3. I did knock out Book 2 (Which came in at 72230 words) and I’m currently 25k into another Wishful novel.  It wasn’t even on the schedule for this year, but Book 3 of Sooper Seekrit Project hasn’t gelled for me yet, so rather than force it, I pushed the publication of that trilogy back to sometime this fall and dove into a story with characters who WERE talking.
  5. Get my new website launched.  This, I am happy to say, was an absolute success.  I gave up trying to bend Cloudpress to my will and found another theme with the ability to modify the elements I needed to.  I’m quite happy with the end result.

What were my accomplishments?

  • I ultimately wrote 103,203 words from April to yesterday.  I actually did the April Round of CampNaNo and cranked out 53k in 24 days (trying to finish before we left for vacation).  Of that total, 16,789 were plotting, which made for just over 86k in actual prose.  And yeah, that’s nothing to sneeze at.
  • Finished Sooper Seekrit Project Book 2 and did first pass revisions.  Sent to Awesome Editor.
  • Did some initial plotting on SSP Book 3.
  • Did some serious revision plotting on SSP Book 1, which I got notes back on from Awesome Editor (yet another reason I’m pushing this trilogy back.  It needs more work than I’d originally hoped.)
  • Plotted and have half written Wishful Book 6, which is Tucker’s story.

I’m pretty pleased with all of that and looking forward to a successful Round 3.

Midweek #ROW80 Check-In

Published on by Kait Nolan

It’s been ages since I did a proper check-in.  May was full of preparing for teenager’s arrival.  I got edit notes back on Sooper Seekrit Project Book 1, which is (as I was afraid) going to take more intensive revision than I had hoped.  I’m not done with my plotting for Sooper Seekrit Project Book 3 yet either and after much consideration, I decided that as Book 1 suffered very much from I-Don’t-Know-My-Characters-Yet-itis, I want to write Book 3 before I go back to revise Book 1.  Which pushes the planned launch of the trilogy back to the fall.  So I jiggered around my production schedule a bit and ended up deciding to write another book in my Wishful series for release this summer–one that hadn’t even been on the docket for writing this year, but what are you gonna do when they start talking?

So I outlined that last week and started writing this past weekend.  I’m about 6500 words into the book so far.  It’s going well.  Going back to Wishful is like visiting an old friend or putting on a pair of my most comfortable jeans.  And that’s pretty awesome.  It was meant to be a novella.  Naturally, it’s not.  It’s not the story I originally envisioned for these two, either, but I think it’s actually a lot more fun.  So next up from me will be Tucker’s story–which should make recent readers of Just For This Moment pretty happy!  He’s up to shenanigans.  Because…Tucker.

That’s it. Just a quick and dirty check-in.  Back to the grind!

Sunday Summary and #ROW80 Update

Published on by Kait Nolan
  1. I’ve spent my weekend camped out in my chair, cranking out words.  16.5k in the last week.  A little over 6k in the last 2 days.  I crossed 40k on the Sooper Seekrit Project Book 2 today.  Thanks CampNaNo (21k since the start of the month).  And that’s a lot of numbers.  Whatever, I’m cranking it out right now.  I’ve been getting a lot of great word sprints in.
  2. Part of why I’ve been busting my hump is because hubs and I are taking a trip for our anniversary at the end of the month.  Which means I have to have my CampNaNo goal of 50k (which would get me to the end of the book…I started with about 20k) knocked out by the 25th.  So I’ve been having to average 2130 per day.
  3. Hubs and I finally watched Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt on Netflix.  HILARIOUS.  And, bonus for us, season 2 comes out next week.  Only downside is that we’ve had the theme song stuck in our heads on repeat for 3 days.
  4. We’ve also checked out Wynonna Earp on Syfy.  It’s kinda like Supernatural meets Jessica Jones meets Tombstone.  All 77 of the guys Earp took out at the OK Corral have come back as demons and his descendants (modern day) have to take them out with his Peacemaker.  It’s an interesting concept.  Bit of a rough start, but I’ve seen worse pilots.  We’re not 100% hooked, but we’re sticking with it a while longer to find out the mystery behind Doc Holliday.
  5. There’s probably other news, but, really, my brain is mush…

Kicking Ass and Taking Names (a #ROW80 Check-In)

Published on by Kait Nolan

So we are barely out of the gate on Round 2 and I am on FIRE.  Totally kicking ass on my word count.  Part of this is because I already had some momentum going with Camp NaNo (which started on the first), but also because my sweet hubs decided we should take a short vacation for our anniversary at the end of the month (the 26th…13 years!).  So we will be headed to  Charleston!  I’m super excited.  But it also means I need to crank out my Camp NaNo words by the end of day on the 25th.  I did the math.  I have to get 2130 words a day to pull this off.  So far, I’m managing, getting up to do a sprint before my morning workout, another one or two at lunch, and another one or two after work.  Either I’m finally starting to adjust to Daylight Savings Time (cue requisite wailing and gnashing of teeth), or the motivation of NaNo is enough to overcome the general tractor beam of my nice, cozy bed.  Whatever, I’ll take it.

Hubs and I started our modified Whole 30 again on Monday.  So far that’s going well.  Latest discovery is the Tex Mex Taco Salad from Down South Paleo (I need to do a more full review of this cookbook at some point).  It’s REALLY GOOD.  Even hubby agreed it needed to go into the regular rotation.  Given that we are both taco FIENDS, this is huge.  And also means that we can use our cheat meal per week for something else.

Baby Boy Garbage Truck (aka Huck) has finally finished all his post surgery medication and seems none the worse for wear.  We’re working on training him to get used to a muzzle for when he’s outside unattended.  Not what we want to do but we like it better than having to take him in for another surgery.

And now I really need to get to my evening sprint.

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End of #ROW80 Round 1

Published on by Kait Nolan

I’m only just now getting around to writing this post, which says a lot about how my week has gone.  So, let’s review the goals I set this round.

  1. Successfully complete Whole 30.  Done.  I finished this in early February to great success.  And promptly fell off the wagon with birthday yummies.  March has been getting back on track.
  2. Write 20 out of 30 days.  Oldie but goodie and a goal I can consistently make.  I wrote 70 days out of the last….well, since first of January.
  3. Continue to get up during the week at 5:15 to write before my morning workout.  I did just fine with this until Daylight Savings Time came back.  There has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and with Huck’s unexpected surgery and convalescence, the morning routine in March hasn’t been…normal.  But I will be endeavoring to roll my get up time backward over the next week in time to get back into this routine for Camp NaNo in April.
  4. Finish Just For This Moment, Piper and Myles’ novella.  Yeah, about that.  It became a full novel.  But it’s finished and it releases next Thursday, March 31st!  You can pre-order it!
  5. Outline and finish Sooper Seekrit project Book 2.  I finished the outline and am nearly done with Act 1.
  6. Get back into my weekly gym routine.  I’d say this has been about 75% successful, though this month, I’ve been doing more working out in my home gym than at the actual gym owing to the [insert vicious profanity here] Daylight Savings Time.  But I finally amped up my lifting routine again, which I’ve needed to do for quite a while.  Happy about that.
  7. Learn Audacity.  Never even touched it.  There hasn’t been time.  I’ve been too busy working on the formatting for the Virtually Yours anthology that’s also coming out this week on Friday!

Other accomplishments this round:

  • I wrote over 87k words
  • Plotted out 3 other projects in addition to Sooper Seekrit Project Book 2
  • Have worked my way through most of my marketing course (which has been worth every penny)
  • Read 23 books
  • Designed a new website (not yet rolled out…soon)
  • Designed a transition website here
  • Done a lot of work on my newsletter (and I’m up to nearly 800 subscribers)

Sorry I’ve Been MIA

Published on by Kait Nolan

I haven’t been around lately.  I’ve been a busy busy girl!

I’ve been working my way through a marketing class, which has led to some changes around here.  This is kind of the in between version of my website.  I have actually started building a brand new site with Cloudpress.  Cloudpress is a nifty concept.  It allows you to build a brand new wordpress theme without knowing a lick of CSS or PHP.  There’s a learning curve and it’s a relatively new technology, so they haven’t worked out all the kinks.  My site was problematic to the way they are designed because I have 10 years of content and my XML file was too big to easily import.  I eventually found a way to do it on my own (because their tech support is uncommunicative and not helpful if you have anything that’s not a simple problem–my repeated inquiries were met with a suggestion that perhaps their service was not best for my project–in other words, please go away, we don’t want to deal with you).  But there are a variety of other things I’m still working on there to make sure there’s a smooth transition when that happens (because this isn’t a matter of just importing and installing a new theme–it means installing a plugin to link your site to the version on their servers, and that version will OVERWRITE your site entirely…hence the need to get EEEEVERYTHING set up correctly because it would be very easy to lose stuff).  I’ve been working on the new site in a sandbox and will unroll it…whenever I finally finish.  Anyway, I made some changes here to kind of ease things in the direction I’m headed.

I got started on the second book in my Sooper Secret Project trilogy, did an outline for another Wishful novella (because you ARE going to find out about Gerald Peyton’s mystery woman), and I just got back my revision notes from my editor on Just For This Moment.  They aren’t bad at all, and I should be finished by the end of the week.  You may have noticed that the preorder links are going up, with a planned release of March 31st.

In more normal world events, I’m in the midst of updating one of my classes for summer to go with a new textbook (I hate when I have to do that).  So that’s sucking up some time I’d rather be doing other things.  Someday I won’t have to do that.

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Anyway, just wanted to pop in and say I’m still around!

 

Still Alive

Published on by Kait Nolan

I have been a lousy example this Round of ROW80.  Missing check-ins left and right.  Barely blogging at all.  I promise I’m still alive.

In the ten days since my last check-in, I’ve finished outlining Sooper Seekrit Project Book 2 and written the opening scene of that.  Then yesterday, a different bunny reared up and started thumping me in the head.  I had to at least get the outline done to get the story out of my head.  It’s a short novella in my Wishful world–the answer to Gerald Peyton’s mystery woman, for those of you wondering.  And BOY is he a cautionary tale, let me tell you.  Don’t EVER name a character something you don’t like because you never ever know who will turn out to be Somebody.  Gerald.  Geez.  Not that it’s a bad name.  I’m sure there are plenty of nice men named Gerald.  But it’s hard to get excited about a hero named Gerald.  Conveniently, he’s Gerald Peyton, III, so we’re just gonna go with the nickname Trey.  Anyway, this second chance romance is one I’ve been excited about since I realized who it was he loved and lost.  It’s just been waiting for Cam and Norah’s wedding…  OH yeah, that’s gonna happen.  Of course, Trey was the one talking when I sat down at my keyboard for my 5:30 writing session this morning.  So…maybe I’ll be knocking this out before I dive into SSPB2.

Just For This Moment is with my editor at the moment, so this novella is actually a pretty good short project to work on while she’s got it.  Then I won’t be fully in a different world when revisions come back.  It’s on my To Do List to get the blurb written and pre-order pages up.  Among wanting to overhaul my website.  Finish the marketing course I’ve signed up for.  Doing some spring cleaning of my house.  Tackling some serious yard work.  Anybody got a lead on that cloning technology or a Time Turner?

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After successfully finishing up Whole 30 at the beginning of the month, the last 3 weeks have been a slide back into old behaviors.  Not a horrible one.  At least not until the last three days.  There were three days of birthday eating.  This involved a kick ass REAL cheeseburger (the Hogwild, in case you were wondering) and onion rings (I totally took a pre-emptive Benedryl), calzones and fudge pie, and chicken strips and waffle fries.  Um.  My body is saying many many very bad things right now.  So I’m just gonna be over here working on a reset.  I’ve got the kit for 21 Day Fix, so I’ll spend the rest of the week adapting that to Paleo and start it next week.  My portion control needs work.  I also need to revise my workout again.  I’m bored already with what I’ve been doing since January, so it’s definitely time to change it up.

I’ve been doing some reading, too.  I picked up a 6 month subscription to Kindle Unlimited on sale, so I’m trying that out.  I listened to Tara Sivec’s Shame On You, which had me snort laughing almost the entire book (warning: Not the book for people who take issue with swearing).  It’s in present tense, which is usually a whole lotta NOPE in audio for me, but Sivec is actually really good with present tense and the narrator is fantastic.  I’ve also tested out Perfect on Paper: The (MIS)Adventures of Waverly Bryson by Maria Murnane, and Catherine Bybee’s Not Quite Dating (still working on those).  For me, KU is all about whatever I can LISTEN to as part of the subscription.  I’ve got SCADS of books for my Kindle.  But at the sale price, my subscription works out to like $7 a month, so it’s half the price of an Audible subscription.  When I’m in the middle of writing, most of the reading I manage is done while doing other stuff.  YAY audiobooks!  And now it’s back to work…

Approaching The End

Published on by Kait Nolan

Clearly I am just not in a blogging frame of mind.  The longer I’m at this, the more I get immersed in whatever book I’m writing, until writing Other Stuff just…doesn’t enter my consciousness.  Until I surface and need to start digging out the house again.

The #ROW80 Update

While I am approaching the end, I have not finished Just For This Moment yet.  I’d hoped to this weekend.  And I did a read through from the beginning, adding about 4k words (in addition to the nearly 9k I wrote during the week), filling in various gaps and finishing the scene and a half I’d skipped over.  After a marvelous and enlightening conversation with Ekaterine Xia (who is delightful), I ended up with a much clearer understanding of my hero and shero’s inner wounds and how they play off each other (and therefore break things in Act 3).  So I’m on a crusade this week to weave those details in a bit better (which will involve axing one scene and writing a new one), and finishing the last two scenes.  And then it is off to The Pink Hammer.  After that, I’ll be going head down working on novella revisions for the Wishful holiday novella I ripped out in December, making some tweaks to the anthology novella coming out in (we think) April, and finishing out the outline for Book 2 in my Sooper Seekrit Project.  I’ve been very much looking forward to the latter.

Operation G.I.T.

I’m not quite a week done with Whole 30 and still noticing impacts I hadn’t expected.  Most of my cravings have disappeared.  I was offered donuts this morning and didn’t even blink or want them.  They just didn’t sound good.  I still get hungry, but it’s not with that ravenous, I could chew off my own arm kind of hunger that I had before.  I learned last night (when we had paleo calzones made from Predominantly Paleo’s yuca dough–they were kick ass, in case you were wondering) that I can’t eat store bought marinara anymore.  It doesn’t taste right.  There’s some weird…twang.  I’m noticing a lot of weird after tastes in the small amount of semi processed food I’ve had the last week.  I guess that’s what happens when your taste buds are no longer blunted.  So it looks like this whole sticking with Paleo isn’t going to be as hard as I thought it might.

Free Stuff

In other bookish news, I’ve got some FREEBIES!  As you can see above, Once Upon An Heirloom is free in honor of  Valentine’s Day.  Everett remains one of my favorite heroes.  And you just might see him and Sylvie again in Book 1 of the Sooper Seekrit Project.  I’m just sayin’.  Also free right now is Once Upon A Snow Day, my first Meet Cute Romance.  And as always, my permafree one, Once Upon A Coffee is still hanging out.  So if you haven’t tried a Meet Cute Romance, this is a good time to nab 3 of them for a great big goose egg.  They make for great lunch time or afternoon coffee break reads.