I’ve been working hard on finishing up the edits for a story that – assuming I don’t change the name again – is now called “The Faery’s Choice.” I love this story, but vastly underestimated the amount of editing it would need – and I thought it needed a fair amount. 🙂 My new rule: assume that any manuscript I wrote more than a year ago will need seven times as much work to finish as a more recent draft. Fortunately I don’t have many older manuscripts left!

In between bouts of editing, I managed to make a cover for the story. It needs a little more tweaking, but I think it turned out pretty well. It was challenging to find a stock image that would would. I’m going to experiment with variations of blurriness, and will likely move the text around mere pixels at a time for at least an hour before calling it complete. But it’s close enough that I no longer feel the sense of panic I briefly had yesterday morning when I was searching through thousands of images and not finding any that fit.

My other revelation, in addition to realizing (or, perhaps, admitting to myself) how much work my older manuscripts need, is that I need to start assuming I won’t get any writing or editing done during the work week. I will, of course, but week after week I start off thinking I’ll have gobs of time in the evenings, then a lot of that time disappears – sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for annoying ones. And for the time that remains, it’s often time where I get interrupted regularly. That’s fine for some types of work, but when you’re working on serious manuscript edits, frequent interruptions make it extremely difficult to make progress because you keep getting yanked out of the story. So I’m going to try to plan tasks that require less concentration for during the week, and if I end up with a chunk of time where I can get more writing done I’ll take advantage of it – but I will try to plan as if that won’t happen.

Most of the stories for the Faerie Summer bundle have been uploaded, and it’s so cool to see all of the covers together! I’m really excited about this bundle – I’ve always loved fairy stories. I’m looking forward to reading all the stories in this bundle! Once I wrap up my own story (“The Faery’s Choice” will be in this bundle) I’ll put together the final marketing images.

Next up is the Beneath the Waves bundle. I just created the bundle’s Facebook page so there’s not a lot there yet, but feel free to like it on Facebook if you’re interested. The theme is mythical water creatures, and the bundle will be available in mid-June.

Happy vernal equinox!!!