Where I stand

At the end of last month, I mentioned all that I had on my plate.

I already said that I didn't get anywhere with the Nocturne Bites pitch contest. Fortunately, I can still send in the full Bite per their normal submission guidelines.

Monday, I sent off my entry for the Knight Agency's Book in a Nutshell competition. Since then, I've finished my hard copy edits of The Christmas Tree Farm Murders and started typing them in. I'll probably have to do another clean-up pass after it's all in, but it should be fairly solid by the end of the month.

I did get a phone interview for the blog gig I applied for, but they decided my experience and skills didn't match their needs.

Looking ahead to May, I'm planning to finish up the edits on my Bite and get it sent off, work on a few short stories (maybe do Forward Motion's Story-a-Day!), and then work on two different outlines: the revision outline for Pepper (my NaNo 2007 story) and the writing outline for Ivory & Bone, which has been calling to me. I'm thinking that, even if I take more time with Pepper than I did the Christmas Trees, I can have her finished and ready to go to critters before we head out on our family vacation this summer -- and then maybe I'll work on Ivory & Bone longhand while we're on vacation. All plans, of course, are subject to change at any time.

By the way, in my New Year post, I listed getting two novels edited, submitting a novelette, and reoutlining my 2007 NaNo (plus a couple of other things) as my goals for this year. Editing The Christmas Tree Farm Murders puts me halfway to that first one, submitting the Nocturne Bite will get me the next one, and 2007 NaNo outline is up next, so I'm doing fairly well at sticking to my goals for the year. Yay, me! How are you doing, one-third of the way through the year?

So much for that one

The short list for the Nocturne Bites pitch contest was chosen early -- 7 names rather than the 5 stated (of 60 total) -- and my pseudonym isn't on the list. I'll still finish my edits and send it off for standard submission, but I am disappointed. I thought I had a decent shot.

Ah, well.