Tonight, at least, I managed to throw words at both Mirror’s Gate and Bone Walker, though, so I’m calling that a win! Still in Chapter 2 on the one and Chapter 11 on the other, but between ‘em I got roughly 500 words tonight. So I call that a win!

Mirror’s Gate:
Written tonight: 267
Chapter 2 total: 2,231
Mirror’s Gate total (first draft): 6,014

Bone Walker:
Written tonight: 293
Chapter 11 total: 682
Bone Walker total (first draft): 30,683

It all means no real major progress in any of it, but at least there was small pointer advancement! We’ll see what I can do today.

Written on Mirror’s Gate, Chapter 2: 157
Written on Bone Walker, Chapter 11: 174
Written on Shards of Recollection, Chapter 1: 150
Written on Child of Ocean, Child of Stars: 26
Written on Shadow of the Rook: 30
Written on Untitled story about Elizabeth, psychic chick of size, and Ross, brother of a dead Warder: 34
Total words written yesterday: 571

Meanwhile, tonight’s Maynowrimo performance was not quite as awesome as yesterday’s. But I did throw words nonetheless at three total books!

Bone Walker: 238 words into Chapter 10, just enough to push me up over the 27K mark for the book. 30K is possibly doable by the end of the week.

Shadow of the Rook: 277 words into Chapter 3. A Faanshi chapter, the first in this story so far. And now I’m all “oh RIGHT Faanshi and Julian and Kestar! I really like these characters! And their story isn’t done yet either!” Shadow is hovering around 14K at the moment.

Mirror’s Gate: Only 79 words here, on Chapter 2. Mostly I was too distracted by the other two books, even though I’d also opened this file. Book’s now around 4K.

All told that’s 594 words, which is still above my old quota of 500 a day, so it’s all good!

P.S. I picked up a couple new followers on Twitter today, so if you folks clicked through to see this post, hi there! Hope you’ll hang around for more.

I’m sure it’d be weirder if it were a big-time physical face to face type convention, but you know what? A virtual convention is still pretty damned awesome. And tomorrow–okay, today, since it’s after midnight now and that does technically make it today–I will be participating in the awesome! I’m in on the Urban Fantasy/Paranormal Fiction panel at 3pm Pacific, 6pm Eastern, along with several of my fellow Drollerie authors and Spellbent author Lucy Snyder! Come by and say hi and listen in. Details on how can be found over at CoyoteCon’s site.

Meanwhile, I’ve been having great fun participating in the CoyoteCon word wars. Like those run by , they’ve been doing wonders at making me get used to throwing words out onto the page on a regular basis again. Today I was feeling particularly ambitious, and managed to add words to not one, not two, not three, but FOUR of the works in progress! Go me!

Bone Walker now stands at nine complete chapters, and those of you who are fond of Elessir may find yourselves going WHA WHA WHA? at the reveal about him I drop at the end of Chapter 9. Muaha. No, I won’t be posting it.

Mirror’s Gate started Chapter 2 as Yevanya reacts–badly–to seeing someone she thinks is her dead husband Aleksandr, and over in Shadow of the Rook‘s shiny new Chapter 3, Faanshi reacts to realizing OH HEY she did something severely, hugely game-changing, about which I will not be elaborating because it’s spoiler-rific for the end of Lament of the Dove. Trust me on that ‘un.

And, I threw another hundred words or so into Shards of Recollection, which is still sitting in Chapter 1, but every little bit of progress counts!

All in all? This has been a good day.

I decided to try this out for the first time today, and ye gods this was crazy effective. I’d decided to try to hit my historical usual daily goal of 500 words, but after three rounds of word wars I’d actually topped 800. After that, the other participants dropped out of the chat room. I was feeling on top of the world, though, and ambitious enough to keep going. Screw 500 words, I thought. Let’s aim for end of a chapter.

And it worked. Ye gods, it worked. I have written 1,592 words total for today, ladies and gentlemen. Chapter 1 of Mirror’s Gate is now complete. And Yevanya has now laid eyes on the man who looks very disturbingly like her husband Aleksandr–only Aleksandr is supposed to be dead! Dun dun dun!

Clearly, I am going to have to participate in the word wars more often if this is what it takes to kick my muse back into this kind of gear. Those of you out there who are also writers, I highly recommend this for encouraging your compatriots to work along with you!

We’ll see, though. These two stories remain the two pulling at my brain the most for new words, although Queen of Souls is sternly reminding me that its second draft edits are long overdue to be resumed. I really need to beat that thing into proper queryable shape so I can get it out there.

Let’s see if I can do this again tomorrow.

Bone Walker:
Written tonight: 110
Chapter 7 total: 1,723
Bone Walker total (first draft): 18,457

Mirror’s Gate:
Written tonight: 115
Chapter 1 total: 1,417
Mirror’s Gate total (first draft): 1,417

Untitled short story:
Written tonight: 115
Story total: 615

So yeah, a small number of words for Bone Walker, Mirror’s Gate, and Shadow of the Rook out of the novels in progress–and a few more for the as of yet untitled story about my Psychic Chick of Size. Whose name is, by the way, Elizabeth Breckenridge. Her male lead is Ross Taggart, and so far what I know about him is that he’s actually too heavy himself (because if there’s anything as rare as a fat heroine in a fantasy story, it’s an overweight hero) by thirty or forty pounds, and that he’s either a private investigator or a reporter or maybe a blogger. I’m not sure which yet. Waiting to see if anything pops out of my head as I throw words at the story.

And we’ll have to see if I finish it in time to submit it to and for their anthology.

Meanwhile, the word stats:

Bone Walker:
Written tonight: 109
Chapter 7 total: 1,613
Bone Walker total (first draft): 18,347

Mirror’s Gate:
Written tonight: 104
Chapter 1 total: 1,302
Mirror’s Gate total (first draft): 1,302

Shadow of the Rook:
Written tonight: 112
Chapter 2 total: 3,950
Shadow of the Rook total (first draft): 13,378

Untitled short story:
Written tonight: 266
Untitled short story total: 500

Written tonight: 120
Chapter 1 total: 1,198
Mirror’s Gate total (first draft): 1,198

A brief snippet from Aleksi’s POV is now in place, although I think I’m going to have to work on that in the second draft. That snippet may actually need to be an entire chapter. But I want to get the first draft written first.

Yevanya is also now on camera, and has started off with a bang, attempting to sternly remind herself that no matter how severe the provocation, ladies of quality simply do not, do not, murder their cousins!

Written at Conflikt: 532
Chapter 1 total: 1,078
Mirror’s Gate total: 1,078