I’ve realised I haven’t posted any writing updates for a while so I thought I’d avoid working on my latest short story by giving an update instead.
The last few months have been reasonably good from a fiction point of view. My writing-every-day streak continues and sits at 1,147 days. I’ve just broken the 150k mark for words written this year (158,173 to be exact) so I’m pretty much on track to break my personal annual word count record (275,872). At this point, I’m pretty confident I can do that. I have several first drafts I want to get written, and they should drive up that word count pretty quickly.
It won’t be obvious to anyone looking at my Amazon author page, but this year I’ve been trying to focus on finishing projects and getting them out into the wide world. That said, the last few months have been spent working on several projects.
The Girl in the Wilderness
This is the sequel to The Girl in the City that I hadn’t planned on writing. And when I did decide to write it I was expecting it to be another novella but a bit bigger than The Girl in the City. It turned out to be a full length novel and close to three times the length of the first book. That one has been through my editor’s hands and is now sitting in the queue for proofreading. I’m currently planning to release it at the end of September. The cover reveal will be a couple of weeks before but if you’re part of my mailing list you’ll get to see it before then.
The Girl in the Machine
This is my current big project. It’s the third and final part of the Leah Trilogy. Again, I was planning to make this another novella but it’s going to be longer – maybe even longer than The Girl in the Wilderness. Very tentative release date for this is the end of October but that’s dependent on how long it takes me to write it, editor availability etc. I’m about 20k words in to this and very happy with how things are going so far.
Secret Short Story
Not much I can say about this one, other than that it’s finished and was accepted by the editor of the anthology it was written for. In fact, he really enjoyed it. Now it’s with another editor for the actual editing process. Not sure what the release date for this will be, but I’m really looking forward to seeing it in print. This anthology is part of a very well respected series, and I’ll be appearing alongside some great authors.
Sitala
The final, unexpected, project is another short story. This one is science fiction, and I’m submitting it to another anthology. It’s an open call so there’s only a very small chance it will be accepted, but I’m very happy with how it’s turned out. In the likely event it’s not accepted for the anthology, I’ll definitely be releasing it myself. Of course, if you’re on my mailing list you’ll have the opportunity to read it for free. Sitala isn’t quite finished (it’s the story I should be working on instead of this blog).
And that’s pretty much it since February. I also have two zombie books written but they’re on hold until I finish off the Leah trilogy I started with The Girl in the City. I’ll probably write the third of those before I start releasing them, so it’s going to be tough to get them out this year. Maybe February 2017. Time will tell.
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[August Writing Update by Philip Harris first appeared on Solitary Mindset on 21st August 2016]